onos217:
95% of Nigeria engineers,do little or no design.What they do mainly is the job of a service technician. I believe you know what the job of a technician entails:maintenance,installation,repair and so on.It has to do with practical work.
My advice is hook up with any of these training centers where they do practical work. What these will do for you is that :
1-it will give you a sense of direction,and you will find it easy to choose what area you want to major into.
2-it will get you involved in more practical work, and engineering will begin to make more sense to you. It is now so many things I learnt in school are beginning to make.

3-It will boost your confidence whenever you go for any interview that has to do with engineering especially the area you specialized in. Because you now have both theory and the practical work.

4-You will earn respect and your client will have confidence in you.
Op,this is my 2cent!

mayprince:
Dear nairaland, I am a fresher of electrical electronic engineering at a university,I have been reading a lot of threads on NL concerning graduates who finished as an engineer in universities but having little or no knowledge in practicals of their specialisation turning them to half baked and sometimes jobless due to the fact that university only teaches theory with litlle or no practical application (as they say).
The last thread I read on NL was about an electrical engineer who doesn't know how to use a tester....my question is that is there any certification I can do during my undergraduate days in my area of specialisation (elect elect engr) to increase my potential in the job market?

cc lalasticlala

Topmaike007:
i really enjoy your post @op but to think of it i am a computer science postgraduate student sometime i ask myself abt what to do, it gives me sleepless nyt until i get to conclusion that i will go into software development and learn programming and networking in an institute and take some courses online at my comfort....@op,go and learn elect/elect somewhere..thanks to my uncle for showing me the way in elect elect,making money in large in school doing rewire for my fellow student.@op nothing is a waste expecially in this nigeria where mbbs graduate is working in the bank..

celestialAgent:
My advice, Quit studying engineering in Nigeria - it's a waste of time. But if you are close to graduation, just get the certificate and go for second degree in a better country.

Electronzeez:
What are you majoring at in electrical /electronics engineering ? . I might be able to guide you .

I personally opted for electronics and telecommunication because I don't really like power though I have first hand knowledge about it.

Don't let anyone fool you about not getting your hands dirty . This is nigeria ,if you don't want to get your hands dirty as an EEE then you have to diversify in to computer . It is the truth you might not want to admit .


Who says because you have a B.sc you will be designing in nigeria ? Okay ...be the first let us see .


If you are planning traveling out of the country especially middle east . Learn HVAC .

Don't make the same mistake as me. Register with COREN . Someone recommended me but the COREN and NSE MEMBERSHIP thing dint make it go well .

Boj2:

Haaaaa.....Apply for siwes during your holidays...mustn't be until your 400L when you are eligible for IT....my time i did a Total of 40 weeks(8==>200L/4wks per sem...8==>300L/4wks per sem....400L..IT===>24 wks....the knowledge gained gave me edge over others that were laid back then....atleast there are somethings i can actually do that i wasnt taught during lectures or workshop practice hours...the experience alone will even give you edge in terms of job application
Bruh you have to be skilled as an Engineer..... Forget all those rubbish being taught in universities... One part is gaining full knowledge about your field ..another part is being practical about it.....

Xmen149:

Lol,.thats where an Engineer comes in,.if you havent had real life works with that system believe me your knowledge in Engineering (troubleshooting from the start of the circuit)wount kick in.

Another thermal guy never had his installation cooling to expectation after all checks.

but what he never knew and was never in the manual is that for every bend on the pipe on the lenght of run adds and additional leght to the total length of run of the pipe to be used.he ends up using more than the total lenght stipulated for the unit thereby reducing cooling.

what am saying is,if you havent been there forget the manual there are extreamly little details that if you havent encounterd them on the site you will always get that you design and all wrong.

rawdpiper:


Was It The Same Firm That You Did The Internship All Through?

Boj2:
No.....tho IT was at a firm Others were just regular workshops

rawdpiper:


Like Hooking Up With A Technician, And Then Going On Jobs With Him?

Boj2:

Yea....more like i was an apprentice.. Tho i let them know the duration i was doing it for

9jabull:


Electrical design jobs are in Nigeria but in building construction.
eg 2 storey buildings and above in most states now in nigeria needs M&E design before government approval especially Lagos.

The other design job you will see in a while is electrical programing (PLC or instrumentation) program to run mechanical equipments in factories.
Like some time ago i was working on a project that i needed a programmer.

oyb:


this is the ABSOLUTE HEIGHT of ignorance and it shows the demise of nairaland.

once upon a time there were enough professionals on this forum to put the OP on the right path

now all we have are kids with no experience , no exposure and whose only exposure to engineering is the roadside technician who rewinds the burnt standing fan.

90% of sky scraper buildings you see in nigeria have their M&E designed by local firms
telecomms networks in nigeria are designed by local firms
power and control solutions for the energy industry [or as nigerians love to call it (oil and gas) are designed locally

oyb:


typical nigerian with poverty mentality.

rather than solve a persons problem and have him recommend you to others, you prefer to leech off him until his equipment has failed or he goes to some other technician

and people like you start to cry when foreigners arrive in this country and start taking jobs from you.

ocelot2006:
I think it all boils down to the area you intend to specialize in I.e. Power, Instrumentation & Control, or Telecommunications. But as a fresher I think that may be a bit too early for you. I'll recommend you try as much as possible to gain practical experience as it will help you appreciate the theory concepts even more. Sign up as an intern with a coy, a small startup, or even meet road side electrician to learn the basics. Once you've identified an area of interest, build on that. That's when certifications will probably come in. Using telecoms as an example, both voice & data networks are now converged. Even your GSM network has fully evolved from 2G based on switches to set up calls to 4G (LTE or WiMAX) that's almost purely IP based. So CISCO certifications come to mind. With a CWNA certification, you'll equally get to appreciate the basics on wireless transmission, mobility, and the 802.11 standards on which WiFi is built on.

oyb:


one of the most annoying things is this rubbish where 'educated' people continue to celebrate tinkerers and artisans as 'practical' work

what you are most likely to learn at the hands of your electrician is how to cut corners, provide solutions that fail after two weeks, and a rote understanding of anything.

my biggest grouse with learning from artisans is that it can fundamentally alter your approach to problem solving. our artisans here either deliberately or by otherwise, are not into root cause analysis. this is why you can find your artisan running the same repair very other month.

first off, electrical/electronics engineering is a very broad field. what are you interested in? power, telecomms , building services, control, IT?

that will determine your path.

ask your dad or relatives to connect you to friends who are engineers [esp those who have their own businesses] and offer to work with them for free. brush aside the boy boy rubbish [inevitable in nigeria] and focus on picking knowledge

Khalifa04:
Baba forget DAT tin na Nigeria we dey,in Elect/Elect if u want to do power and want to be on field u need some elementary knowledge from electricians and artisans and later build on it and some of software u re mentioning re not applicable in Nigeria

Power engineering, also called power systems engineering, is a subfield of energy engineering and electrical engineering that deals with the generation, transmission, distribution and utilization of electric power and the electrical devices connected to such systems including generators, motors and transformers. Although much of the field is concerned with the problems of three-phase AC power – the standard for large-scale power transmission and distribution across the modern world – a significant fraction of the field is concerned with the conversion between AC and DC power and the development of specialized power systems such as those used in aircraft or for electric railway networks. Power engineering draws the majority of its theoretical base from electrical engineering and while some power engineers could be considered energy engineers, energy engineers often do not have the theoretical electrical engineering background to understand power engineering.

Kingsyze:
Get a certification in NDT and welding inspection, you can contact me for further advice

ocelot2006:


Forget about COREN or NSE for now.