Nigeria: Igwemezie – Railway Engineer Par Excellence

Written by jrood

He is one of the exemplary ambassadors of the rebranding Nigeria campaign in diaspora, the Daily Champion in Nigeria reports. A man who has made immense contribution to the development of modern railways in the world, he is one of the exemplary ambassadors of the rebranding Nigeria campaign in diaspora.

A seasoned professional,
consistent achiever and industry role model, Dr. Jude Igwemezie is the chairman
of TransGlobin (Globin) International, Founder and President of Applied Rail
Research Technologies (ARRT Inc).

He has built a solid
reputation as a distinguished and thoroughbred railway engineer committed to
uplifting the standards of railway transportation around the world. An expert
in structural mechanics, stress and failure analysis, Dr. Igwemezie is
passionately committed to making his own contributions to efforts at developing
Nigeria’s economy.

Having lost his father in
a road accident, this icon of the railway industry believes that an efficient
rail system will take pressure off the roads and rid them of the unnecessary
delays and loss of lives associated with road travel.

He kept offering to build
a standard gauge railway system from Lagos to Calabar, knowing that Nigeria is
a place where railway services is going to be profitable and successful because
of its size and population and because the nation’s demography is similar to
that of Europe. But like that proverbial prophet who is not known in his native
land, his effort was frustrated in Nigeria, hence he took his services
elsewhere.

Igwemezie won a
$500-million contract to build a monorail network in faraway Iraq. It took only
two months for him to secure a Memorandum of Understanding with the Iraqi
government while the expert has been in negotiation with Nigerian officials in
the last 18 months to contract several rail lines in the country. Igwemezie who
once described the Benin-Ore road as "a killing field," believes that
with the construction of the East-West rail corridor, people who live in Benin
can work in Lagos, since it will only take two hours on an express line to get
to Lagos from Benin.

Dr. Igwemezie’s
professional qualifications and laurels are numerous. Born in Nigeria, he
obtained his B. Eng. Degree in Civil engineering, M. Eng and Ph. D. degrees in
engineering from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is a registered
professional engineer in the province of Ontario and has been involved with
rail related engineering and research, since1981.

Always in quest of
knowledge, Igwemezie has carried out tens of million dollars of engineering
contracts including all major Class 1 North America railroads, and currently
the $500 million contract to build a viable rail transportation network that
would connect Iraqi’s three Islamic holy and historic mosques in Imam Ali, Kufa
and Sahle.

Since 1988, Dr. Igwemezie
has also authored or co-authored 120 articles, reports and publications on rail
tract and vehicle system. He has made significant contributions to the rail
industry being the first to develop a methodology for setting railhead wear
limits, which is being successfully implemented in several North America
countries.

In 1992, he developed and
published mathematical relationships between dynamic loads defect size and rail
fracture during cold weather train operations. He investigated wheel failures
in Hi-rail-vehicles and developed the residual stress standard incorporated into
the AREMA (American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association)
manual.

Dr. Igwemezie has
investigated wheel-shelling problems for railroads and suppliers and analyzed
wood, concrete and steel tie failure. He has designed derailment containment
barriers for residential areas, high-relief joint-bar that allows more rail
wear for several North American new tie plates and clips that fight gauge
widening and prevent rail rollover, as well as new joint plates that allow
positive tie-down of the joint. In 2004, he designed a revolutionary insulated
rail joint that has a section modulus that is three times greater than that of
current systems and also greater than that of the rail section.

Dr. Igwemezie has been
actively involved in the development of track superelevation policies for
railroads. Recently, he pioneered development of the software (ASET) for
setting track superelevation, locomotive power utilization and fuel
optimization in trains. He also holds or has pending patents for several innovative
railway track components.

This icon of rail
transportation also has significant experience on the impact of rail grinding
and lubrication on rail life, track forces, rail stresses, tie stresses and
track alignment. In 1997, he was invited to address AREMA on rail management
during their annual conference in Chicago.

In 1999, he led the team
that reorganized the management structure of the Nigerian Railway Corporation.

In 1997, the UniP
Railroad Steel tie and fastener systems designed by Dr. Igwemezie won the Gold
Medal in the Industrial Systems Category of the Canadian Design Engineering
Awards. In 2001, he received the "Harry Jerome Award" for
Professional Excellence from the Black Business & Professional Association
of Canada. In 2008, he received an Outstanding Business Achievement Award from
the Business Development Bank of Canada. In 2009, Igwemezie received an Award
from the Nigerians in Diaspora Organization (NIDO) Canada for outstanding
contributions to the diaspora community and industrialization in Nigeria. In
2009, he also received Resolution of Appreciation from the International Heavy
Haul Association (IHHA) for his contribution to the latest book on Best
Practices for Heavy Haul Railway Operation.

Dr. Igwemezie is also an
industry expert on derailments and track component failures including providing
expert reports and witness testimony in court litigations. He is the current
Chairman of Sub -Committee -2 (Rail Rolling Specifications) of Committee -4 of
AREMA.

Railway transport in Nigeria
is inefficient and has hardly developed at all over the past 100 years compared
to railways in the developed world. This is due both to maladministration by
successive governments and to the lack of a functional transport policy
ensuring a constant pattern of railway development.

Railway construction was
started by the British colonial government in Nigeria in 1898 from Lagos in the
Southern Protectorate. Railways were seen by the administration as a better way
of consolidating power in the newly acquired territory. Also, railways were
developed to gain access to the rich agricultural and mineral resources in the
hinterland. There seems to be a general consensus that Nigeria’s indigenous
engineers largely lack expertise required for the development of an efficient
railway system.

But Igwemezie’s outstanding
achievements have however debunked this perception. He has indeed proved that
Nigerian engineers can compete effectively with their foreign counterparts
given the necessary enablement.

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