By Obinna Nwachukwu, , Abuja

The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA) Engr. Aliyu Tukur Tahir has been bestowed with the distinguished Fellowship of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE)

The ceremony which took place on Wednesday in Abuja also had 425 other members joining the elite club of engineering professionals.
Founded on 16th February, 1958 by a group of young Nigerian graduate engineers and students in the United Kingdom, the Society is one of the oldest professional bodies in Nigeria.

Performing the Fellowship Investiture on the recipients, the NSE president, Engr Tasiu Sa’ad Gidari-Wudil said the Society like some of its counterparts in other professions, has “distinguished itself through progressive and imaginative programmes to become the avenue for the professional development of its members as well as technological development of the country”
According to the NSE president, the objective of the Society is to promote the advancement of engineering education, research, and practice in all its ramifications.

“Naturally, this is with a view to maintaining and enhancing the professional capabilities of its members so as to better equip them to fulfill the needs of the profession for the good of the public and the nation of large”, he said stressing that ” the Society also aims to provide a central organisation for engineers in Nigeria and to generally to such things as may for time to time be necessary to maintain a strict standard or professional ethics among its members and to advance the interest of the engineering profession in Nigeria”.

Speaking with newsmen shortly after the award, the NEMSA Chief Executive who is also the Chief Electrical Inspector of the Federation (CEIF),  described the conferment as an honour to him and fellow conferees.

The MD attributed the award to his hard work in NEMSA from the inception of the agency.

“I was part of the team that laid the foundation for NEMSA. My becoming the MD is also in recognition of the hard work that was put in place. The good thing is that the foundation has been laid.  What remains now is building from the foundation.
“Immediately I became MD of NEMSA, I hit the ground running. I looked at the situation when I came in and identified three issues where we have made successes. But what is needed is to continue with the successes. I have seen areas where we need some realignment to bring them back to the trajectory of success which we are working on.” he said.

According to Aliyu Tahir,  the Agency in line with its mandate has   embarked on the enforcement of technical standards and regulations, inspections, testing and certification of all categories of electrical installations and meters across the power value chain of generation,  transmission, utilization and distribution.
“This is a wide mandate. So,  we need to open up our activities to cover the entire mandate of the agency.

“For example, the certification of electrical personnel scheme used to be done once but I have expanded it to four schemes. The monitoring of the existing network was only done in monitoring spots but it has been re-engineered to ensure monitoring is done by feeders for the impact of monitoring can be easily felt and brought to limelight” Tukur, said.

He said that the activities of the agency during monitoring has led to the discovery of the use of substandard electrical materials and equipment by Distribution Companies (DISCOs).

“Once we notice such issue, we ensure they are removed from the system. So,  this has guaranteed improved power supply, improved capacity utilization and reduction in the number of interruptions on the feeders.” Engr. Aliyu stated.