ACTING PRESIDENT AND THE MM AIRPORT LUGGAGE CAROUSELS

I am sick and tired of this unending discourse on Buhari's illness. I will therefore not go there.

This country Nigeria never ceases to amaze me. It is reported here that, Acting President Osinbajo, in one of his trips to Lagos' international airport, "challenged officials on why the air conditioning and a luggage carousel were not working, . etc "

For the past forty-five years in engineering, I have been troubleshooting and fixing problems for a living. I have a lot of fun emphasizing that the assignments I enjoyed most were the ones where the solutions cannot be found in Mark's and other engineering handbooks. I was trained to work from first principles. I can swear that I am neither alone nor unique. I recall that as far back as 1976, my Oga at Coca-Cola, Chief Ade-John did not want and did not get long stories from me and my colleagues. Why then this constant repetition that a certain big man, (it does not have to be the president), visits the supposedly premier MM Airport and ORDERS the management to fix the airconditioning, the luggage carousels and perhaps the standby generators?

All the areas mentioned above are mature technologies. Speaking to some truly incompetent NEPA/PHCN staff a couple of years ago, I had thrown in this poser. Could any one of you have survived my engineering class, with Awojobi, Adekola. Aderogba, Onikpinla, Ajayi, Olubode and many others teaching? Together with those pretending to undertake asset management and plant availability at MM Airport, how many of these "engineers and managers" could hold down a job at NLNG, SNEPCO, NBPlc, Guinness, Lafarge and Dangote Cement, etc? Or run a competent fabrication shop?

In many of these operations, materials conveyance systems, under heavy and dirty duty environment, have to run nonstop ie almost forever. And yet we cannot get the luggage carousel to run for a few minutes every hour. I am consumed by shame. Why don't we hand over that aspect to Lafarge or Dangote? The conveyor system in a typical cement, sugar or flour bagging operation is definitely more complex. Same with a large throughput bottling operation.

From information that I gathered since the early 60s, I know for a fact that refrigeration technology is not a new concept in these parts. Refrigerants, compressor, condensers, chilling water, air handling units, etc. You add units in parallels; you swap. I have heard this patently stupid excuse, "The unit is 25 years old and is no longer available" Some of these guys need to return their certificates. Those who studied under one Nigerian Government scholarship or the other SHOULD refund their school fees. It has been such a waste. I am so ashamed of them. 
Seriously.