President Muhammadu Buhari has said that he has total confidence in the ability and effectiveness of Nigerian engineers.

The President expressed this sentiment on Tuesday when a delegation of the Nigerian Academy of Engineers, NAE, paid him a courtesy visit at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

The Academy also decorated President Buhari as its grand patron.

Buhari said he had been working with Nigerian engineers right from when he was a petroleum commissioner at the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF.

“Nigerian engineers are competent and cost effective. I respect you all, it takes a lot to be a competent engineer,” the president stated.

He later wrote on his social media handle: “I have a lot of respect for Nigerian Engineers having worked with them over the years, from my time as Petroleum Commissioner, to the PTF.”

President Buhari said that it was not entirely true that Nigerian engineers are not being engaged in National projects.

According to Buhari, 99 percent of the engineers involved in the construction of the four refineries in the country were Nigerian engineers.

He reiterated that government has always taken Nigerian engineers seriously in the task of nation building, as they can compete favourably with their counterparts across the globe.

Buhari further said that the country’s leadership was to blame, not the engineers, for the fact that none of the four refineries in the country are currently working.

President of NAE, Joanna Maduka, commended the president for his administration’s commitment to correct the infrastructural deficit in the country.

She said: “This effort is very germane to the development of our nation. For this to be done effectively and efficiently, inputs are required from all cadres of engineering disciplines.

“The physical indices of development of any country are engineering based like roads, railways, water supply, power, housing and other infrastructure.

Maduka also said that “for the country to attain sustainable growth status, the Nigerian engineers need to be adequately engaged in planning, policy formulation, consultancy and construction as well as industrial processes of production and manufacturing.”

She added that Nigeria is currently “grossly under-engineered”, and even fewer professional engineers were in positions of authority unlike what obtains in other countries.

“Currently, about half of the cabinet ministers in Singapore are engineers and in China, 70% of the cabinet members are engineers,” She stated.

According to Maduka, the NAE is currently made up of 140 fellows.