NBTE Boss: Nigeria’s Quest for Skills May Remain Mirage without Re-inventing Technical Education

John Shiklam in Kaduna

The Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), Prof. Idris Bugaje has said Nigeria’s quest for skills acquisition would remain a mirage unless technical education is reinvented and re-engineered.

Speaking yesterday in Kaduna, while declaring open a workshop on the review of 10 National Technical Certificates (NTC) and Advance National Technical Certificates (ANTC), Bugaje said improvement on the curriculum of technical education alone, would not achieve the desired result without adequate funding, provision of infrastructure and the training of technical teachers.

According to him, provision of infrastructure, establishment of technical colleges and training of technical teachers were required to reinvent and re-engineer the technical education.

Bugaje said, “Our polytechnics in Nigeria are supposed to admit students from technical colleges, but t because the admission to technical colleges is so low…

“We will not go anywhere if we do not re-engineer and reinvent the technical college.

“One way of doing that is the curriculum which you are already doing, but mostly important we need to put the correct infrastructure, we need to improve the environment.

“We need to kill this broken window syndrome- once you go to a technical college, the gate is broken, the windows are broken, the machines are dilapidated… that has to change. We need to proper infrastructure, proper machinery and train the teachers,” he said.

According to him, those who studied sociology and Nigerian Languages and end up heading technical colleges should be booted out for the right people to be recruited.

“I know of a technical school where somebody who studied Hausa is the principal! What does he know about skills?

“Technical colleges must also be linked so that they can provide dual certification- ATC and ANTC,” he said.

He noted that, “Everybody is talking about the German dual system whereby children in sub- tertiary level go to school for three days and three days apprenticeship in industry.

“Our own version of the dual system is let them do the conventional NAPTIP exams, NTC etc, but let them also do NSQ, so that they would be able to get two certificates.

“If they want to pursue diploma, they can hold their NTC and get admitted to do their diploma.

“If they want to follow vocational track, they can now do higher levels of NST…

“They should be able to train students who will fit into the AKK gas pipeline, so that we should see Nigerian youths replacing Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia who are having millions of skilled construction workers.

“We should see Nigerians making quality furniture so that we will stop importing from Turkey or China.

“So we really need to change the whole settings so that these products of technical schools will now fit into the industry.

“Our hope is that in the next five years, we should move admissions to technical colleges from below 1 per cent to at least 5 per cent.

“In another 10 years we should move to at least 25 per cent and in another 15 years we should move admissions to technical schools from 25 to 50 per cent.

“That should be the win-win situation for skills in Nigeria, so that technical colleges will be at par with the conventional secondary schools and polytechnics would be directed only to admit students from the technical colleges.”

According to him, “It is the absence of students from technical colleges that polytechnics are admitting students from conventional secondary schools.

“By the time we have that 50 – 50 ratio, Nigeria will have no problem with skills production both for local needs and for export. So this should be the way to go.”