Proactive safety culture in Nigeria through engineering education: A key to the prevention of catastrophic incidents in the industry

Advances made in promoting a culture of preparedness through disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives are strong building blocks to promote more comprehensive changes at the policy level and strengthen resilience in the everyday lives of children, families, schools, and the communities they serve. Proactive safety entails constantly ensuring the safety efficacy of systems, procedures, and people. Process safety entails the identification and understanding of potential hazards, the evaluation of consequences, safeguards, and risks, and the addition of layers of protection to prevent and/or mitigate incidents. The purpose of this study is to review the proactive safety culture in Nigeria through engineering education as a key to the prevention of catastrophic incidents in the industry. A strong safety culture is required to protect employees, but it is especially important for protecting students and developing their skills and awareness of safety. A questionnaire was developed to obtain feedback from industry experts and other stakeholders on the appropriate contents of an undergraduate course on safety that will produce safety-conscious engineering graduates and ultimately a culture of safety in Nigeria. These questions were asked in the following areas: safety assessment in Nigeria, importance of safety education, and safety courses for engineering students. Based on the responses from the 250 questionnaires distributed and 208 responses, a safety course curriculum was suggested with a possible 30 course outlines that could support students at different stages in their development, and as such, it would be expected that students’ safety skills improve as they progress through their degree.