Without safety equipment, FUTA engineering students repair school's solar lights | EduCeleb
Confidence Evwodere
8th July 2019
As part of efforts at integrating practical to theoretical knowledge, students of the Federal University of Technology, Akure were on Monday deployed to carry out repairs on the solar street lights on the campus. But no visible safety equipment was deployed.
The students in their fifth academic year who belong to the Electrical Electronics Department were led to the task by their lecturer, Dr Thomas Ale.
Dr Ale disclosed that the team set out to investigate faults and carry out repair interventions on solar street lights in the University.
He said the task to investigate the faults in the street lights and to proffer necessary solutions to them was given to his team by the Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Joseph Fuwape.
According to him, there were about Three Hundred (300) solar street light poles within the University and his team will ensure that they all become functional in due course.
He equally noted that the intervention will help to restore the faulty lights and also strengthen the practical capacity and knowledge of the students involved in the project.
He did not however give an explanation for the non-utilisation of hand gloves and other possible safety equipment near the sites of solar power projects, development professional engineers found appalling.
An engineer, Ayorinde Oladiran wondered why the students were not given any equipment to protect them. He said that they “should be given personal equipments like helmets, safety boots nd original hand gloves should be worn.”
“Let’s encourage standards and professional practice as obtained in global best practices,” he added.
On his part, Babajide Oluwase proposed that safety was adhered to whenever such interventions were to take place again.
In his words, “it’s a great step in the right direction. Safety gears must be put in place during subsequent interventions. Adhering to safety standards is important and this is the best time to inculcate such best practice in the emerging engineers.”
EduCeleb.com recalls that FUTA made history in June 2017 when it became the first Nigerian university to launch a satellite into space.
The university had launched a CubeSat, with the code name NigeriaEdusat -1, into space from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida , United States.
The Nigerian Cubesat, is a component of the Birds 1 satellites , comprising of four other CubeSats belonging to Japan , Ghana, Mongolia and Bangladesh . They will be launched from the SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket .
The had said back then that it hoped to make satellite technology popular “among members of staff and students of the university for the purpose of research, resources and environmental management and sustainable socio -economic development of the nation.’’
“The Nigerian CubeSat is designed, built and owned by The Federal University of Technology , Akure in collaboration with the National Space Research and Development Agency , Nigeria , and the Kyushu Institute of Technology Japan . Mr . Ibukun Adebolu of FUTA’s Department of Mechanical Engineering is the representative of Nigeria on the project. It is the first ever university satellite to be launched in Nigeria.