Clement Folayan

Clement Folayan (Born 1941) was a Nigerian mechanical engineer, academic and author. He was the former Director of Nigeria's first automotive design centre, Center for Automotive Design and Development (CADD). Clement Folayan was also a former Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering department, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. As director of the Centre for Automotive Design and Development CADD, Folayan leda team of engineers to build Nigeria's first vehicle using 75% locally sourced content.

In 1951, he attended Offa Grammar School in Offa, Kwara, Nigeria. In 1966 Folayan obtained a Bachelor of Engineering (B.Eng) honours degree in Mechanical engineering from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and won the German Academic Exchange Scholarship from 1967–1969. He graduated with a Second Class Upper Division in Mechanical Engineering in 1969. In 1971 he won the Nigerian Federal government scholarship and proceeded to Imperial College of Science and Technology, London where he acquired a Master of Science degree (M.Sc.) in Heat Transfer Engineering in 1972 and obtained a PhD in 1976.

In 1992 the military administration led by former Nigerian Head of state General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida initiated the Centre for Automotive Design and Development(CADD). CADD was tasked with looking at the possibility or feasibility of making a Nigerian car. The optimism for a 100 per cent made in Nigeria car with locally sourced and manufactured parts including the car engine, therefore, started as part of the Centre for Automotive Design and Development (CADD).

Prof Folayan was appointed to lead. CADD developed a three-wheel vehicle prototype was tailored after the India three-wheel vehicle. Two more four-wheel vehicles prototypes, which toured cross country all over Nigeria and ended in Nigerian Capital city Abuja were presented it to the Minister of Science and Technology in 1998.The project demonstrated that a Nigerian car could be achieved. The car was also presented to the then President, Shonekan.

The next phase of the project included presenting the technical design, the financial analysis and the economic viability of the car to the Nigerian business community, at a stakeholder conference to initiate the process of commercialising the vehicle and setting up a factory to produce the Nigerian car. During the regime of President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2002, the CADD project was dissolved and brought in as a function under Nigeria's National Automotive Council.

• Registered engineer withthe CouncilfortheRegulationofEngineering Practices in Nigeria (COREN)
• Member, Association of Mathematical Physics;
• Fellow, Solar Energy Society of Nigeria. (Vice-President, 1986);
• Fellow, Nigerian Society of Engineers, (1994);
• Member, Society of Automobile Engineers. (5289468507 A.)
• Member, Materials Society of Nigeria.
• International Advisor, Society of Automobile Engineers.

• The most innovative in automotive Industry at 17th International Trade Fair at Kaduna, 1995
• Merit Award for Excellence in Engineering Manufacturing. NSE Annual General Conference December, 1997.
• Merit Award Winner for ‘The Development in Nigeria Education’ Higher Education Category, July 14, 2007.

• Prof. Clement Folayan on Google Scholar