Safety Professionals Value Loyalty to Politicians over Truth- Engr. Shokunbi Engr. Samuel Oluwole Shokunbi is an accomplished engineer and Health, Safety and Environment practitioner. He is the current Head of HSE at BUA Sugar Refinery Ltd.
Shokunbi, a member of various professional safety bodies recently launched his book, on “Safety Engineering in the Workplace Environment”. In this interview with HSENations, he states his accomplishments and the challenges of safety in the field of engineering where he has been for over three decades. He also gives insight on Nigeria’s responsibility in leading the African continent in pushing the frontiers of safety.
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Excerpts
What would you say has been your greatest accomplishments in this field of engineering safety?
Engineering practice has a wider scope but the major problem is that some of our practitioners don’t do what is right. They compromise. If they compromise, their professional calling is going to cause a lot of problem because we are the custodian of safety. Engineers play a vital role in ensuring that safety is part of our system because safety is embedded in the engineering field of practice. We are the ones to actually grant the safety.
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An engineer is a driver of safety right from project and equipment design; foundation, commissioning and maintenance repair. Engineering is the key to open the safety door because without us, the door will not be open. The engineers are the engine. We need to actually drive the engine to a better and safe destination. If we don’t do what is right, it will be difficult for us to prevent casualties within our environment. So we have a vital role to play. So I implore each and every one of us to do the needful so that we can protect our image and the integrity of our profession.
You are a member of several professional bodies, would you agree that these professional bodies are living up to their responsibilities to the nation?
I belong to different professional bodies as rightly said but let me say also that everything is about politics. Those saddled with these responsibility take it as a political appointment. Even though they were elected there, some of them compromise. That is the basis of why we are having these issues. So if we are to do what is right, we need to do it properly because it’s all about human lives and properties. Any time election is about to take place, you will think maybe we are in a political gathering because we will go with politics. It’s not about the best anymore but about where each of us come from. It has been turned into a regional affair. We need to do what is right. We need to do the best. We are the ones to show leadership by example even to the Nigeria political class. We need to discharge our duties properly.
It has come to the level that our safety leaders are been manipulated by the political class and they can’t say the truth any more and this cuts across all the professional bodies. Do they offer the best quality services to their members and the Nigerian people at large? No. All what they are doing is how to get something from the political class. And this has made them irrelevant. They can’t criticize. They are not ready to fight to the finish because their identification with the political class has caused a lot of problem in this country and that makes it difficult for us to find our bearing.
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So what solutions do you proffer to the general challenges of safety in the country?
We have a bright future provided we don’t identify ourselves with the political class. We are the eagle eye of the common man and Nigeria generally. When I say common man- I mean the labourers, the personnel at the workplace environment. We are like a labour union that we need to stand up for and fight for them. We may not fight physically. We have our own and our mouth to fight for them. To tell the political class that enough is enough and what they are doing is wrong.
For us to actually get it right, we have to follow the template that Lagos State has introduced. It is only Lagos State Government that has a safety commission. I don’t know why other states have not been able to do that. It is not something that we should fold our hands. What I expect from us is to ensure that each state actually put in place the safety commission. Lagos is trying but this thing has to have a larger scale. Safety is all about life.
What would you say about the position and role of Nigeria in promoting safety across Africa?
First and foremost, we must detach ourselves from the political class so that we can be able to tell ourselves the truth and ensure that we promote this profession to the level whereby the common man will be happy first. If we do that, we will be able to put it right and the entire Africa will respect us. And Nigeria been the first in Africa, we must be able to set a standard. We are the ones to lead so that every other country will follow us. If we want to take the lead, we need to do our own work very well. Without that we will just be a laughing stock to other nations. But it will be too bad in five years time if Nigeria’s professional bodies and those who are saddled with the safety profession are still crawling. It is not going to help us as a nation.
Everywhere we have issue, it is all about safety. Buildings are collapsing- did they follow the standard procedure? Who are the people involved? There are people that approved the project to go ahead- did they do proper monitoring? These are among the major issues why Nigerians have problem. We see the road been completed nowadays- did they even monitor it properly by government? They leave it for the contractor. Do they leave it for a competent professional? So it is also about safety, we don’t need to compromise integrity. Integrity has become a major problem. We need to rise up to these occasion and I strongly believe that if we rise up and do the needful, Nigeria will become a better place.
What would you say has been your greatest challenge in this field, and how have you been able to overcome them?
I have been in the field of engineering since the last three decades or more. All I can say from the experience that I have gathered, led me to actually produce a book, is that that there are three people involved in safety, the employee, the employer as well as the regulator. As an engineer in the country or in the workplace environment, we have a lot of challenges because the promoter of business actually compromised and in many cases, they will always want you to follow the instructions while most of them don’t have the knowledge of what the machine is all about and the risks behind it. So this has led to many accidents frequently. And this has given me the opportunity to come out and say I have witnessed so many within the place I have worked.
They don’t embrace the culture of zero tolerance and how to manage equipment. They don’t do what we call preventive maintenance. If you have a plan on how to manage your equipment, it will reduce a lot of casualties because all the materials you need to do for the schedule maintenance will be available or no one will be running helter skelter when the machine breaks down. It is part of what caused a lot of problems and then they want to shift the blame to the engineer saying that they don’t know what they are doing.
The Factory Act is also there for the regulators to follow up. They also have to play their role. They are not suppose to compromise. How often do they go to the factory for routine inspection? How many people have they punished? How many companies have they shut down? They only wait for issues to degenerate into a problem whereby, it will now become a news. They don’t carryout what we call a root cause analysis to know what actually went wrong so that they can be able to prevent a reoccurrence. So this has become an issue and it’s still happening up till now so all we need to do as a professional body is to play our role. If there is anything that will make you to compromise, it is better for me that I resign rather than compromise. If I don’t resign and I try to retain my job, at the end of the day, I may be part of the people that will be consumed with the unsafe act practice.
What is your advise for those that are upcoming in the field of safety?
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For those who are coming in, they need to have a passion. In life, there are three people you don’t lie to. You don’t lie to a Pastor. You don’t lie to a Doctor and a Legal Practitioner. These three people keep secrets and out of these three people that keep secrets, some argue that Pastor is the most trusted person among them. So in safety too, it is the same thing, you don’t lie. It has to be exposed so that we can prevent the reoccurrence. It is only when you exposed those things that we will be able to get a solution and nobody will like to be a victim. Safety is not about you alone, it is all about everybody within your environment and if we don’t do it the way we are supposed to do it, it will become a very big problem. If the passion is there, more will be done. That has only been my advocacy to ensure that things are done properly- we are trying to save human lives and properties.
