He made the call in Abakaliki, Ebonyi State, on Wednesday when he paid a courtesy visit to Prof. Chinedum Nwajiuba, the Vice Chancellor of Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo (AE-FUNAI).
The visit was prior to the opening ceremony of the first Biennial International Engineering Conference of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology of AE-FUNAI.
The former minister said that the country required bright minds that could adapt to the diversity of the digital age, hence the need for ICT – compliant lecturers in institutions of learning.
He said, “We need to coach young lecturers and plan workshops to train them because it is not enough that they acquire academic knowledge. If we must align ourselves as a country to the technology development taking place across the globe, we must start now.
“Lecturers should be ICT-compliant and competent before being employed in schools to impact in all spheres of the academic cycle.”
Nebo also said that the conference would provide possible solutions to the development of infrastructure decay in the South East region.
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According to him, there is a systematic plot to keep the region’s development process aback.
He added that the region had the capacity to revive its decayed power plants to provide jobs for citizens of the region and further contribute to the country’s revenue generation.
“We have serious problems in terms of power generation because you cannot industralise any place without power. The South East region needs a robust infrastructure to develop and we need to prove that we can grow without much support from government.
“We must embrace discipline and love for one another, challenge ourselves to development,” Nebo said.
Represented by Prof. Sunday Elom, the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academic, Nwajiuba said that Nigeria, with an estimated population of 200 million people, was still struggling to achieve 4,000 megawatts of electricity.
He said that indiscipline was the major bane for power failure in the country, which he hoped that the conference would proffer solutions to electricity problems in the country.
The vice chancellor also urged participants at the conference to ensure they came up with ideas to address building collapse cases across the country.
