Efio-Ita Nyok|22 July 2017
Mr Obasesam Okoi, a Nigerian in the diaspora precisely Canada has slammed Cross River State Governor, His Excellency Mr Ben Ayade, over the latter’s decision to employ the services of Shaaan Xi Province of China to undertake a geological mapping of the state.
For Okoi, local experts in the University of Calabar (UNICAL), Calabar can undertake this task being among the best geological scientists in the country. Okoi who sought to know between the state government’s inferiority complex and the dearth of skilled manpower —what the challenge could be, noted that some of the experts from China whom the governor was employing are diploma certificate holders with experience. He stressed that, in the bid to encourage research, the state government would have contracted UNICAL professors.
His words, ‘Geology Professors at the University of Calabar are among the best geological scientists in Nigeria who have trained some of Nigeria’s most successful geo-scientists, geo-engineers, petrologists, geo-physicists, and geo-morphorlogists.
‘Despite this potential, the Ayade government went to China to hire experts for the geological mapping of Cross River. Is it that those professors at Unical lack the knowledge or expertise to conduct geological mapping, or that corruption and inferiority complex is causing the government to under-utilize the potential of local experts in preference for foreign expertise?
‘Let me emphasize that some of the so-called Chinese experts mapping our geological terrains in Cross River are not university trained experts but diploma holders who have acquired knowledge of geological mapping through work experience and training.
‘In a sane society, such contracts will be awarded to the geology department to encourage research and development’.
Do you agree with Okoi that local experts would have been contracted instead of foreigners? For me, I must confess, it’s an insult on our collective intelligence that the Governor gives the impression that the commonest thing as geological mapping can’t be conducted in Cross River nay Nigeria!
Efio-Ita Nyok
Is a Blogger, the Editor & Publisher of NegroidHaven
