Kunle Adekoya
5 July 2008
interview
Byany standard, the experience of Dr. Ebenezer Ajibola Meshida is a sermon in humility, perseverance, endurance, and obedience to elders, one value held high by many Nigerians. Meshida had graduated with a BA in Geography in the 60s, and ordinarily should have gone to make a good career in the civil service or elsewhere, but his elder brother, a soil scientist, intervened.
The older Meshida, now a grand old man who lives in Ireland where he was educated, insisted that his junior sibling should also be a soil scientist, and further insisted that, after the BA (Hons) in Geography, the younger Meshida should re-enrol for admission to study soil science and geology, and it did not matter to him that his junior sibling was an arts person who would find a quantitative discipline like that a hard nut to crack. But obey he must, so he dumped his BA and re-enrolled as a freshman to study geology and soil engineering.
As Meshida himself acknowledged,"it was a rough road, very rough road. So, I entered prelim-science physics, chemistry, and it was like a nightmare.... I had a friend who retired as a professor of physics. He was coming to my house to teach me mathematics and brought me to the level acceptable to the department."
It is doubtful if any of today's youths would take such an instruction from an older sibling. However, all that is in the not-so-distant past, and thanks to the local equivalent of the Nobel prize, Dr. Meshida is now recognized for the product of 26 years of tedious research, during which colleagues sniggered at him for wanting to do something that had not been done before.
The product of his research efforts into soil foundation for roads, which he called LATERALITE fetched him this year's NLNG Science Prize. In this interview below, Meshida recalls the days when he started, his doggedness and varied experience, and how it can be used to make roads that will not fail for the nation. Going his experience, most of our expressways have no foundations, and roads that are without foundations fail easily, after the first rains. Excerpts:
CONGRATULATIONS on winning this award. How exactly do you feel and how has the journey in academia been?
Well, I feel very much excited by the winning and I will say, really that practically I was confused at the beginning because it was like a peak of achievement of a lifetime, and it came most unexpectedly.
Naturally, I was jolted, but thank God, positively. And I've been excited. I've been extremely happy and grateful to the unknown judges, because I don't know them and they don't know me either. So, I'm very grateful to them for giving me the award.
Let's know you personally, where were you born, your academic career, growing up and things like that?
I come from Ita-Ogbolu, near Akure. My father was a catechist of the Anglican Church and he worked all his life in Ekitiland. So, I grew up in Ekitiland; I was born in Erijiyan-Ekiti. I first schooled at Ilawe-Ekiti, then we moved to Ado-Ekiti, where I attended Emmanuel School, Ado-Ekiti. I moved to Akure in 1954, St. Thomas School, and entered secondary school, Oyemekun Grammar School in 1957, then got school certificate in 1961, and then entered Christ's School, Ado-Ekiti for. HSC in 1962. Then I entered the University of Ibadan in 1964. All along, I was an arts student - History, English, Geography.
Then I had a BA in Geography and then by the influence of my elder brother's persuasion, he sent me back to school to study prelim-science. That was after the degree to have a B.Sc in Geology. It was a rough road, very rough road. So, I entered prelim-science; physics, chemistry, and it was like a nightmare. But somehow like a miracle again, I was admitted to the B.Sc class.
What was his motivation for that, what was his reason?
Well, my brother's reason was that I should join him as a soil-engineer; he is a soil engineer. He had his own degree since 1960, from Belfast, in Ireland. So, he came back, paid my feels in secondary school. And then he was trying to make me into a geologist, so that I can be relevant in his works as a foundation engineer. He succeeded because after my geology, he sent me back to school again, in Lagos here, in the civil engineering department to study soil mechanics and foundation engineering. I had a "P"in mathematics in school certificate.
How did you cope?
Again, the roughest road ever because I had a friend who retired as a professor of physics. He was coming to my house to teach me mathematics and brought me to the level acceptable to the department here. So, that's my rough way in academic life. It was very tedious.
What you have just described was tedium in living colour. You mean, after a BA, you dumped it and started all over again when you would have joined your mates in the civil service?
Yes, I started all over. I would have become a principal in my school, everybody was laughing at me. They said, 'ok, leave him. When he fails he will know the implication of what he is doing?'
This brother of yours, is he still around?
He is still around but he is elderly now. He lives in Ireland now.
Are you from the same parents?
Same father, mother. He is the first born of the family. I'm the number four.
So he had much authority on you?
So, much authority, so much authority.
He was like a surrogate father?
In fact, he was. He was somebody just to take instructions from. Just let him talk and that's it. Then you go on and do whatever it is he said. Just carry on.
How is your own personal family life?
I thank God I have a very nice family. My wife is very understanding; she is a radiographer but she is working right now in a London hospital as radiographer. When she retired from LUTH, instead of just wasting around (she has British qualification), so she got a job in London. We have six children; three boys, three girls. They are doing very well. They are all graduated now. Everybody is on his or her own. Everybody is doing well, we are a very happy family.
When did the first idea about this particular line of research start?
It is a fairly long story but I will make it short. When I was working with my elder brother as geologist, he assigned me to join the British firm that designed the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in soil testing. His company was given the contract. So, he assigned me to go and do the soil testing for the British firm.
So, I knew that one of the major problems the engineers were talking about, they were not talking to me but they were discussing it among themselves, the way water was destabilizing laterite soil. After finishing the road, water will just destabilize it, soften it and everything will just crack. So, I heard the statement. Again, I was seconded to investigate soils on the Calabar-Itu-Ikot-Ekpene highway in 1973. So, the American engineer was one Mr Wilson of Urban Engineers of Michigan.
He was chatting with me on where exactly to find construction materials in that area. He said the laterite soils will easily get dissolved with water dissolution. I said Odukpani area, north of Calabar is a limestone area. I said maybe we can find something in limestone area if he don't want use the laterite soils.
So, I actually investigated limestone area for him. But with those problems, and as a geologist, I thought I should even try to study something. Then after my brief study at Unilag civil engineering, I now went to Ife as a research student to do the M.Sc in engineering geology. So, that was how I came about playing with laterite.
I discussed with my professor then, the popular Professor Adegoke who is now a consultant to oil companies. He allowed me to use laterite soil for my M.Sc and even Ph.D. Then my mind went back to finding a solution for this problem of water dissolution. And you know, all our roads are suffering from this thing. No matter what you do, one rainfall will be enough to destabilize the road. So, I decided to find and understand the chemistry of laterite. What can we do to counter the effect of water? The road in doing that has been rough and tough.
Can you vividly describe that?
The solution we have now is a mixture of minerals selected in proportions and pulverized; ground together to very fine powder. When you grind something to fine powder it will have electrical property; it will develop electrical charges. A clean mineral, for instance, is electrically charged. Sand is not charged, no matter how you pulverize it. It has no electrical charges. So, in the mineral compound you have that sample is an electrically charged sustenance.
So, when you now take a small pinch of it and put it in the soil that has a clay, the red clay, mix it with some water, chemical reactions will occur. And then if you bind the iron and the aluminum together with the soil they won't give room for water to come in, to come and dissolve them. So, any water that goes in comes out clean. It doesn't touch anything there.
So, we are only saying road making can take advantage of it. If you now take the soil that is even causing the problem, don't throw it away. Put it together, put the powder into it, mix it, it's now a good construction material; roll it into position, it becomes very compact.
After some thirty minutes you now throw it into water. The water stays by itself, the soil stays by itself. What you see there (points to specimen in plastic container) has been there for seven years, since April 2001. This is June 2008. That's in the same water, though it has reduced now. We add more water. No dissolution at all.
How can government take advantage of this research finding?
As a researcher, I like experiments very much. My life is built round experiments. I will encourage the federal government to encourage my type of experiment. We still have one long road to go. I won't just say now, let's be using it.
No. The Federal Government can come in, to say let's produce this powder, and give me a ten or twenty metre or half kilometer stretch of road in a difficult environment and assist me to produce the powder and use it the way it should be used.
Then, we monitor the road for some months. During the rains (and) after the rains, we monitor the road. Then we see how stable it is. Of course, that means I have to supervise the design of the road - engineering design. The construction of the road, I also have to supervise because if you just give to one contractor, he may not even use it. He may come back to say it's not good. It's not working.'So, I have to be there to do the measurement on site and get the thing in place in the way it's done engineering wise. And then everybody will now monitor it. So, if it's now successful, then that's the time I would say 'federal government, over to you.'
Can a factory be built to produce this?
Yes. That's along my plans also. I have designed the machinery - the mixer, the blower, the pulverizer, everything. But as an academic person, when you design, that's like a full stop. The money is not there. So, we need at least one understanding investor to bring money, then we have an agreement.
Then we produce the first series of the material. It is a patented material. So, it is not a question of somebody stealing it and running to somewhere to go and start producing. Geologically, it is not even possible to steal the composition because apart from myself, nobody knows the mineral, content. Because, all those twenty six years, I wasn't discussing much with people because nobody understood what I was doing. Everybody was making jest of me, like you want to go to the moon, what you are doing is not possible. Drop it, don't waste your time!
So, people have actually been discouraging you?
Of course, colleagues say it is not possible. So, if I can construct the factory at Ota, that my landed property, then have a warehouse and roll out the first bags, because I also need bagging equipment to bag it. Then, I can't award an experimental road to myself, it has to be government awarded. Like a mini-contract based on understanding that it is an experiment but it has to be a contract.
You talked about going to Ife as a research student, how did you come back to Unilag?
All right. I went to Ife in 1975 as a research student; I was given junior lecturership appointment by my department when it was seen the type of maybe experience or some form of knowledge I had collected, so, they made me a junior lecturer and I stayed there working like a normal lecturer, did MSc, Ph.D.
You got the Ph.D from Ife?
Yes, from the same department. But at a stage I knew I was wasting away as a lecturer.
Why did you think so?
Teaching and not having enough funds for research is a waste of time. It is like you are dead. You are teaching the same thing everyday, year in year out, and so on. So, I said 'I'm going back to the field.' I'm a field person. I was made to be self employed. So, I came to Lagos, left my fine accommodation on the campus to stay in Bariga. So, after about five years, my colleagues saw me and brought me to the university here to assist in teaching in physics and civil engineering. So, I've been here as research fellow on contract.
Does that kind of arrangement secure necessary funding for your research activities?
(Laughs) No. Strictly, not.
In the university system, there is the funding problem in the universities, especially lack of research grants.
How did you get money to continue the project?
On this project, I had no assistance, monetarily, from anybody.
You mean you funded it?
Everything! Even the production, uptill now, not anything from anybody. People didn't understand what I was doing. So, nobody can put his money on what you call research. In fact, people laugh at you when you say you are doing research. They say 'what do you want to do that people have not already done.'
How does the university community feel now as recognition has come for this campus?
Well, I see practically that everybody is happy. At least Unilag is the host environment for propagating the result of the research. So, I think everybody has been naturally glad about it. Colleagues have reacted very positively and I'm happy about it all.
Still on getting this thing marketed, have your marketing road repair materials?
No. I've not. I know a lot of road repairing firms around but they are for surfacing, to repair and to patch, to seal. This one is not to seal surface. This one is to treat the foundation. All soil you want to use as foundation, this one is to treat it, so that when you compact it, it remains compacted. It doesn't crack. Then when water comes, it doesn't lose its compaction strain.
Of course you are going to seal it with asphalt normally. It has nothing to do with road surfacing. It is the foundation itself. Then we now have to design proper foundation at least for our express ways. All these express ways we have, Lagos-Ibadan and the others have no foundation. It has a natural soil which they call sub-grade. Then it has a base course to distribute the wheel load; stresses from the tyres, but there must be a foundation.
This thing you are talking about seems to be the main problem underlining why our roads .... Don't the engineers in works ministry know about these things?
Well, I am sure they know but one thing that I have observed is that when words 'expensive' or 'cheap' are used, they bring negative results. If for instance they say you want to make a kilometer of road for N10 million, and somebody says, 'ah, that is very expensive. It should be N2 million. Let it be cheap.' Ok, by the time you use the word 'cheap' intuincially, nothing that is cheap is good. It will not endure. Now, when you say expensive, it is a relative term.
In your opinion N10 million is expensive. Now, in Britain, that your N10 million that is expensive will be N50 million desirable, essential. In Nigeria N10 million is expensive and so when you go to Britain and see N50 million building for the same length, we all enjoy it. To them (Britons) it is essential. To us it is expensive. But expensive in what terms.
One man killed as a result of road accident because of bad road is more expensive than N50 million. Then many lives (are) wasted continuously on bad roads. In what terms monopteral can you assess it? So, I think they in the ministry, if I am talking to engineers, I will say let us all do what is essential. Let's come together, we have quantity surveyors.
You know ,cost of materials, lets now design what is essential and cost it and let the federal government put down the money to do it. So, what we are doing now, I don't know. The foreign contractors come, what they will not do
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