By Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth
 Published
September 3rd, 2008
There are quite obviously Political ,economic, financial, managerial, social and cultural sides to the electricity supply problem in Nigeria but we have not adequately addressed the scientific and technological sides of the power problem in
Nigeria. Our cash and carry approach to the power problem cannot help us. It
doesn't make much sense importing 100 per cent of the components of a power station. 16 billion dollars said to have been spent so far is a lot of money by any
standard. And I suspect we would have to import the Software and personnel for
maintenance and repair of the power stations.
Professor Lateef Hussain, Vice Chancellor of
the Lagos state University is a first class degree
holder from the university of Ibadan and a
Physicist. When I first met him in 1984 he told me that
he met with an Indian who told him he had no pity for
Nigerians when they complain about electricity. This
was when the energy situation in Nigeria was not as
bad as it is now. Quite rhetorically the Indian wanted
to know from Prof Hussain how many Nigerians studied
Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, That was at a time
when the premier institution ,University of Ibadan was
graduating as few as five students in a year from
the physics department. Few of our students then had
physics as the first choice on the JAMB form.Many of
those in the physics Department were regarded as drop
outs from Engineering. We were also importing Indian
graduates of science to teach in Nigerian educational
institutions including our secondary schools.
I do not in any way mean to suggest that the humanities are not useful. There are important questions to be addressed by the Humanities and the social sciences that cannot be handled by the Natural sciences This is part of the lessons to be learnt from the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki There is more to this world than being technically honest And the Natural sciences have also
benefited from the Humanities and social sciences with regards to such disciplines as Patent Law ,Journalism, Marketing, Advertising, Design and public relations. .
Nigerians
even now need to the informed that the man regarded
as the father of electricity is the British Cmemist
and Physicist Michael Faraday. Born on September 22
1791, and on October 28 1831 he dicovered the
principle of generating electricity.
Indians have been
making their mark on the world of physics since the
19th century. We have a man like Jigadish Chandra
Bose whose work in the late 1880s and early 1900s with
electromagnetic waves fetched him a US patent helping
to lay the foundation for modern Radio.. India won her
fist Nobel prize in Physics as far back as 1928 for
the work of V.Raman on the nature of light. V.Ramans
nephew, S.Chandrasekhan also won the Nobel prize for
physics in 1983. People like lateef Hussain have no
business being vice chancellors they should be working
in laboratories but we just do not have the
laboratories in Nigeria. Who is a Professor of Physics? A Professor of physics has been described as a man with the keys to so many Laboratories.
On the technological chessboard Mathematics is King, Physics the Queen and the diverse fields of Engineering the Knights in shiny Armour.
Because of the scientific
Know how in India, major global corporations are keen to
pack their investments for Research and Development in
India. Perhaps India was lucky to have Pandit Nehru
as her first Prime Minister. He Studied
geology, botany a bit of physics and then crossed to
Chemistry., Today the Nigerian President is a
Scientist, precisely a Chemist. . The Vice President is
a biological scientist. Precisely a Zoologist I hope this means better days for science and technology in
Nigeria.
Togonu-Bickersteth,London,England website:
http://adebayo.blog.co.uk
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