Miffed by electoral irregularities that greeted previous elections, Federal Government has unveiled plans to manufacture indigenous technology that would make subsequent polls transparent.
Minister of Science and Technology, Ogbonnaya Onu, stated this at a maiden world press conference on his reappointment into the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
Onu lamented how human errors have caused irregularities in the exercise, urging political actors to embrace technology that enhances clean and transparent exercise.
He said, “In our journey to build a great nation, we must protect our democracy. Our elections must be simple, clean, transparent and devoid of violence.
“This way, we will elect only those who represent the will of the people. We have seen that most of the irregularities in elections can be traced to human errors and factors.
“Hence, the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology will develop an appropriate technology to give our nation clean and transparent elections where violence will have no place at all.”
The minister, while fielding questions from journalists, expressed concern about how the nation’s moribund manufacturing plant has not been effectively utilized to enhance production of local materials.
Onu said his ministry is making tremendous efforts that ensures effective use of the plant, which is owned by National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructures (NASENI).
NASENI, one of the seventeen federal parastatals under the ministry last week, had sent no fewer than 60 of its engineers to China for training on how to manufacture transformers.
The minister, who didn’t reveal the name of the private firms the country would handover the plant to, stated that asides making efforts to produce electric transformers, it will still guide and demand from the firms to make use of local materials that produces power through solar energy.
“NASENI has a manufacturing plant facilities. I went there in Karshi. It can be expanded. So we want the private sector to come in and intensify our own research here in the ministry. We would give every support to NASENI so that they can do research in a way that we can produce solar cells.
“We would try to use our own sand to make our own solar cells and when we do that, we would reduce the cost considerably because the problem with solar energy is the initial investment is heavy but after about 5 years or so, it’s almost like we don’t spend much.
“As the solar is working in factories and other places, because you need a good battery to store the energy you get during the day, at night, you can use it. We would go to Federal Executive Council (FEC) and say that if you are building a house, we want a situation, whether public building schools or so to find students facing power failure in schools. Hospitals get affected during surgeries too,” he said.