Women engineers urged to translate career passion into enterprise

Professional women engineers have been urged to translate their career passion into enterprise so as to improve human experience and make life better for the populace.

President, Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN), Felicia Agubata who stated this at the recently concluded 2018 International conference /AGM and the 35th anniversary of the association tagged, ‘Passion translated into enterprise’ affirmed that women in the engineering profession can translate their career passion into enterprise which in turn will contribute positively to human development.

“Besides being a female engineer, one can have passion for enterprise, pursue and follow such passion and ensure it comes true. But before then, such an individual must have a business plan that she is passionate about, you might fail several times, but do not be discouraged because you will ultimately become successful,” Agubata added.

She described passion as the most effective driver when it comes to launching business or an enterprise and added that its presence or absence is a critical predictor of whether an idea will lead to success.

According to her, “Most successful people on earth follow passion not paycheck, make your passion; make your passion your paycheck. Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire. Working hard for something you do not care about is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion. It is beautiful when career and passion come together,” she affirmed.

On the idea behind the choice of conference theme, the APWEN President said: “Over the years, we have been talking about girl-child advocacy on studying Science, Technology , Engineering , Mathematics (STEM) and how to pursue a career in engineering, over the years the theme of our conferences has been on capacity building, but this year we want to talk about the woman who is an engineer, practising engineering and we want to look at how she can translate the passion she has for engineering into enterprise and when she achieves that, she will not only do exploit in her chosen profession which is engineering, but will also succeed in business she has passion for.’’

On his part, CEO, Seplat Petroleum Development Company, Austin Avuru commended the organisers of the programme, saying that training will spur the participants to become future successful industrialists.

Also speaking, former president of APWEN, Idiat Aderemi Amusu, regretted that Nigerian women were politically under-represented, adding, ‘’Nigeria has the lowest female parliamentarians in Sub-Sahara and ranked 133 in the world. Their upper and lower house representation fell from 7 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2011, the African average is 19 percent. Only 7 senators out 109 and 35 out of 360 house of representative are women.”

Ngozi Okpalakunne