Nigeria is well suited make vegetable oils from various sources to meet the need of the world market given the pact that it has an excellent wealth of Plant Resources,a Professor of Industrial Chemistry Prof. Emmanuel Temitope Akintayo has said. He made the declaration while delivering an Inaugural lecture on "Renewable Plant Resources as Platform Chemicals for Sustainable Industrial Development".
According to Prof. Akintayo, "if Malaysia could succeed as world leader in production of palm oil within 20 years, then Nigeria with the same plant and many others has better capability that can make it a leading country in Oleo chemical production by 2030, a period when oleo chemicals may take over from petrochemicals".
He, therefore, suggested a careful development and appropriate management of the country's plant resources to enhance Nigeria put its industrial economy on a firm footing.
Observing that plant resources are replenishable and that Nigeria has huge potentials for their development Emphasis on Resource management should shift from mineral (non-renewable) to agricultural resources which could lead to even income distribution among greater number of the country's inhabitants who are the producers distributors or industrial processors of these agricultural commodities.
Earlier in his 54-page of inaugural lecture, Prof. Akintayo had explained that the third world was gradually waking up to the realization that science and technology was what seperate the South from the North, and that Science and Technology determined the living of a nation.
The Professor of Industrial Chemistry discussed "Sustainable Industrial Development, Expoxidised Oils and Derivatives, Spectroscopic Analysis of Oils and Compositional analysis of some Renewable materials, among others.
At the end of the lecture which was attended by numerous dignitaries, the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Patrick Oladipo Aina declared that Prof. Akintayo was fit to occupy the seat of a professor in EKSU.
SOURCE: The Ekiti State University