The Nigerian Government has been asleep at the wheel for decades when it comes to developing a strategic composites technology policy that focuses on empowering the industrial base and deepening the opportunities for advanced technology transfer. The consequences of this failure in leadership are evident in the abysmal state of the nation’s industrial development.
The dynamism of the industrialization process demands that its engine be constantly stroked with new ideas, engineering processes, and progressive policies. It is a process that abhors stagnation. Countries that ignore this principle find themselves fated to become relics, fit only for display in a museum. To date, the industrial fate of Nigeria is frighteningly precarious in every sense.
As a country, you are either an industrialized nation with its attendant benefits—prosperous, G8, and with world leaders—or you are confined to the non-industrialized League of Nations, doomed to the export of extractive commodities for a pittance to sustain your wobbly economy. No nation aspires to the latter club. Even for the uninitiated, the benefits of industrialization are self-evident.
In contemporary Nigeria, however, economic indicators have shown declining contributions from the productive sector to the nation’s Gross Domestic Product GDP for decades, aside from crude oil export. Admittedly, the decay in the manufacturing sector is the result of diverse factors that conspire to render many industries comatose. Yet, a case can easily be made that the problem is due to the failure to infuse the industrialization engine with the new ideas and technology that would sustain it. There is ample evidence, in fact, that many manufacturing industries have become progressively unhinged when newer or smarter technologies and materials render their operations non-competitive.
Newer materials and engineering methodologies have been supremely dominant in the worldwide advancement of the industrialization process. Depending on the benefits sought, the blend of two or more elements can provide much desired benefits such as higher tensile strength, lighter weight, high resistance to corrosion, low conductivity, and more. These advanced materials, such as fiberglass and composites, are indispensable in the progression of the industrial process by providing smarter alternatives to metal, wood, and plastic. Currently, there is barely any industrial application where composites are not in use, including marine, power, automotive, construction, wind energy, defense, aerospace, appliances, electrical/electronic, and sporting goods. For example, in aeronautic construction, an estimated 50% to 70% of new aircraft construction materials consist of composite material. In defense, fighter jets, naval ships, and armored carriers are discarding steel in their construction for advanced composite material to achieve faster fighter jets, faster vessels, or better armored carriers.
The energy industry has long embraced composites as the material of choice in many of their applications from crude oil production, storage, and pipeline transport to wind energy generation. In an environmentally conscious world, few energy companies would be foolhardy enough to ignore the long-term repercussions of using other, less environmentally friendly products. Although the composite industry in Nigeria is burgeoning, the failures of the federal government to formulate a strategic policy that will stimulate its growth remain an impediment. The tragedy of Nigeria’s successive administrations is the obsessively myopic attempt to smuggle Nigeria through the back door into the comity of industrialized nations without an established and vibrant industrial base. While technology has moved on beyond steel, aluminum, and wood to these high performance materials, Nigeria has been ensnared for more than 30 years in the never-ending construction of the Ajaokuta steel complex—with no end in sight.
In the Industrial Policy of Nigeria 1989, government declared that, “Nigeria’s Industrial Development strategy will encourage forward and backward linkages within a few chosen niches. Government will continue to provide the enabling environment for private sector leadership, facilitate renewal for sunset industries, and encourage innovators. It will specifically promote small and medium enterprises.” But these are lip-service declarations that are emblematic of the poverty of ideas that continue to taint successive Nigerian industrial policies.
Globally, administrations that recognize composite technology as “the next great thing” have moved at an exceptional pace to advance their industrial capacities by maximizing its full potential. Such dynamism in industrial processes confers superior comparative advantage on the productive capacity of these manufacturing sectors. Unfortunately, the Nigerian administration does not recognize the importance of such endeavors. Only recently, the Director General of the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI), Prof. Olusegun O. Adewoye, declared that “about 80 percent of the manufacturing activities all over the world are based on advanced manufacturing technology” and concluded that Nigeria should not be different. (Daily Trust 21st December 2008). However, even with a clear identification of what needs to be done, little attempt has been made to act on these declarations.
Clearly, the solution lies in the complete overhaul of the nation’s obsolete industrialization techno-policies and strategies so that they can be properly structured to harness advances in newer technologies, materials, and engineering. Critical to such a blueprint-making and implementation process is the need to eschew past policy perversions such as political considerations or tribal sentiments. Moving forward, public-private partnership projects should be symbiotically tied to the use of newer technology and materials to substantially stimulate the market and encourage foreign direct investments in the composite industry. Additionally, there is a need to strategize ahead of the curve to secure a firm footing in the global multi-billion dollar composite materials industry. Establishing a presence among global technology players will facilitate the appropriate intercourse in technology barter which, in turn, will intensify the pace of industrial development.
As a nation intent on the rapid development of its industrial capacities, Nigeria cannot afford to ignore emerging advanced composite technology. Doing so would return the country to the circumlocution that has held it back from taking its rightful place among other industrialized nations. The Nigerian government must seize the moment to develop a strategic composite techno-policy that focuses on empowering the industrial base and deepening the opportunities for advanced technology transfer.
Emma Adoghe, a member of the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering,
Covina, CA , is the CEO of CP Fiberglass Ltd.
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