Pulse.ng : COREN, NBTE move to reposition engineering, technology education in Nigeria

By Sani Idris

The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, (COREN), and the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) have moved to reposition engineering and technology education in Nigeria.

The two organizations made the pledge at a technical meeting at the NBTE headquarters on Thursday in Kaduna.

The President of COREN, Prof. Abubakar Zubair, said that repositioning the engineering practice and technology education was at the level of polytechnics, monotecnics, technical colleges and the informal sector.

Zubair lamented that over the years, COREN identified a lot of gaps due to lack of synergy between it and the NBTE which if rekindled, would result to greater achievements and development in the engineering sector.

The president noted that technical colleges in the country which were about 126, were not regulated, saying that they had virtually lost their quality and standards in the country.

“Technical colleges feed into the monotecnics and polytechnics, where the end is almost dead in the colleges.

“The future of this country in the area of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is in jeopady if we don’t sit down to address the gaps,” he said.

According to Zubair, the informal sector is choked with millions of youths who have the requisite competencies, skills and proficiencies who are not certified.

He therefore, recalled that the NBTE, had packaged the National Skills Qualification framework and COREN produced about 18 sector skills council.

“COREN will eventually have to accept to register the trainees when they are certified.

“This workshop is very key to identify areas where we and the NBTE must work together and bring other relevant key partners like ITF, NABTEB, NUC, TetFund and other agencies and sectoral regulators in areas of engineering and technology,” he said.

The President said COREN would revive residency practice for engineering which was packaged many years ago.

He stressed that engineers and technologists are also professionals, where the issue of funding created a crisis on residency practice.

He however, expressed optimism that the Federal Government’s agenda which included human capital in areas of skills competencies and entrepreneurship, had given them the energy to advocate to the Government to accept the one year residency for various groups of the engineering cadre.

Also speaking, the Executive Secretary of the NBTE, Prof. Idris Bugaje, decried the poor state of engineering in Nigeria in terms of productivity and industrialization.

Bugaje, however, blamed the Nigeria state itself for allowing basic infrastructure for industrialisation to collapse.

“We have one of the lowest electricity in Africa. We cannot industrialize with 30 Mega watts per capital, this is one area which I don’t blame the engineers,” he said.

He equally lamented that the engineering profession had been allowed to move by technology, where a lot of the manufacturing processes were digitalised and involved mechatronics.

He expressed dismay that the curriculum had not been upgraded because the NBTE was poorly funded over the years.

“We get on the average of N50 million to N70 million yearly to review over 300 curricula; this is impossible.

“We have spoken to the Federal Government and the funding is yet to come. We are now reaching out to industries and other stakeholders to join hands with us to upgrade our engineering curricula in the polytechnics,” he said.

According to the ES, for every engineer from the University, in a proper managed economy, he needs five technologists and technicians where unfortunately it is in the reverse order in the country.

“We even have more universities than the polytechnics in the country, Government should start moves to convert these universities into polytechnics to produce the needed skill manpower for our industrialisation in the country,” he said.

The ES said they discussed together with the COREN on international accreditation with the Washington Accord for Engineers and the Sydney Accord which they were working on so that Nigerian would be recognised globally.

According to him, the only hope for Nigerian engineers to learn skills is to go to the informal sector.

“In the whole country, if not for Lagos and Ogun state and only Kano in the north, no other state has much industries as they do. The proposal to rekindle residency training for engineers is a good idea.

“Currently, we are trying to engage the Panteka market in Kaduna and Kofar Ruwa in Kano, the Apo mechanic village in Abuja so as to formalise their apprenticeship training and build capacity of graduates to benefit from the informal sector.

“The Nigerian economy is 75 per cent informal, Government need to give more attention to it,”he said.(NAN)