Interview With Nestec Grand Prize Winner

Three winners emerged at the maiden edition of The National Engineering Science and Tech Essay Competition (NESTEC) organized by Blue Apple, a tech company. Abdulbaki A. Ahmad who was the Grand prize winner of the competition tells of his experience at NESTEC 2019 in an interview with Engineer’s forum correspondent.

How does it feel being the winner of all the finalists at the National Engineering Science and Tech Essay Competition?

I feel very elated and excited about this very opportunity. The organizer Engr Akan Micheal said that out of 150 papers 13 finalists were selected and I emerged as the very first. I am very excited.

Tell us more about the paper you presented at the competition?

My paper “ Smart Grid – The Viable Route to Trouncing Nigeria’s Recurring System Lapses” is about how we can improve electricity in this country.  As an electrical engineering student, I believe we cannot get to the state we want to without having a reliable and affordable source of power supply. This country has suffered a lot on this Issue.

By now, there are a lot of things we should have achieved, but due to the epileptic state of electricity in the country, we are still at a spot or even plummeting down. This paper looks at the problem we are having now to reform and identify new technologies to address all these problems of our system collapses.

You made mention that your paper is the first of its kind in the country, how true is this?

When I was writing the paper, I did academic research on Google, which led me to several academic papers and journals. I noticed that all the papers written about this very problem and on Smart Grid in Nigeria, are not directly centring on how to carve out those problems through Smart Grid. But there were very many papers centred on tackling the problems of our system collapses.

What did it cost you to carry out this research and what inspired you to write on this topic?

The fact is that it is not an easy process. This is something that was like a revelation because I had my internship at a transmission station. And I saw the system collapse happening over again, and I said to myself which way are we going to get out of this and tackle the collapses. Hence I delved into the research, in that process I came up with some of the practical ways to address the situation. This is the 21^st century and the world revolves around technology in these times. It’s all about Tech, and these technologies can be created locally to address our issues. All I did was to harness these technologies and propose a model.

How do you intend leveraging on this platform from here?

At the beginning of writing the research, I consulted my instructor, who was a senior systems operator at the Transmission Station I had my internship. Now all I want is an opportunity to present this very research to the MD Transmission Company of Nigeria, Mr Mohammed Usman for consideration of deployment in our very country.

What words do you have for fellow young aspiring engineers?

We should always be thinking. This country needs innovative engineers.  The developed countries have a level of sophistication in terms of industrialization, that’s the nature of development and engineers are those that drive these in every nation. We are the backbone of the country, we are the future of this country and we should work tirelessly, indefatigably to see that the country is on track with the pace of the world’s digital revolution.