Plateau Polytechnic Breaks New Grounds, to Commence B.Tech Programmes

Seriki Adinoyi in Jos

Plateau State Polytechnic has disclosed that it is putting plans in place to begin Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) programmes in some of its courses soon, adding that it has enormous manpower to achieve this seeing that majority of its lecturers possess PhD certificates in their various fields.

Disclosing this in an exclusive interaction with THISDAY, the Rector of the Polytechnic, Dr. Clement Chairman, said that having recently got accreditation in 31 of its courses, the institution is now set to break new grounds by establishing new courses, training for the award of B.Tech, and even advancing for postgraduate training in the near future.

Chairman, who was appointed Rector in February 2024 said he was given a clear mandate by Governor Caleb Mutfwang to revamp the polytechnic and make it compete favorably with other technological institutions in the country and world over.

He said, “My appointment was made by Barr. Caleb Mutfwang to help in addressing some key challenges confronting the Polytechnic. Before February, the polytechnic was going down in terms of academic standard, infrastructural development, and staff morale. His mandate to me was clear; to revamp the institution and make it compete favorably with other technological institutions in the country and world over.

“The biggest challenge I had to confront was accreditation. Since 2018, there has not been accreditation of courses in the polytechnic, and all our courses were at the risk of losing credibility before the National Board of Technical Education (NABTE).

“Because of this, our programmes were to be closed and our graduate denied participation in the compulsory National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) deployment because we were running unaccredited programmes.

“The first thing I did within the first two weeks of my appointment was to confront the issues of accreditation headlong. I was appointed in February 2024. By March, we had invited NABTE to come and conduct accreditation of courses particularly in Sciences, Engineering, and Environmental Studies. We got accreditation in all these courses, about 31 of them. That was a very major achievement, as it helped in bringing back the credibility of the institution, and injecting confidence in candidates to come to the institution, and of course, putting us on the pedestal of excellence.

“Over 80 persons were sent by the NABTE to Plateau State Polytechnic for the accreditation exercise and were here for about four to five days. And when the report came it was excellent.

“Before then, candidates were not making our polytechnic their choices because courses were unaccredited and the environment was not favourable. There was also the issue of constant strike action by the unions that culminated in closure of the polytechnic. All these put together discouraged candidates from making the polytechnic their choice. So we had situations where students spent four years pursuing programmes that should ordinarily last for two years.”

The chairman said that with productive engagement with the various unions in the polytechnic and addressing their agitations, the institution had just completed an uninterrupted academic session.

He added that the polytechnic is now set to begin to break new grounds by setting up new courses and collaborating with universities to train students for B.Tech programmes in affiliation with these universities.

“My next plan at the moment is to beef up the student population. We have started doing that already, and we intend to continue. Knowing that our courses are now accredited, more candidates are now applying. We are also ready to mount new courses that were not there. We have some of the courses at diploma level only, but we intend to start the Higher National Diploma in them, so that students can come for both National Higher National Diploma in them.

“We also understand that in Nigeria, the HND is profiled to be low compared to University degree because the society does not seem to understand the content. We intend to tackle this curiosity in line with the new development at the NABTE. We intend to put up modalities to mount B. Tech, that is Bachelor of Technology in some key courses and it will help us to attend to the curiosity of our candidates that feel the need to have a university education.

“Here in the polytechnic, we have the manpower to even run postgraduate programmes; we have a lot of PhD holders among our lecturers, even more than some universities in the country. But the issue is that of mandate for Polytechnics to run degree and postgraduate programmes on their own. So what we are doing is that we are going in affiliation with other relevant institutions to make us run these programmes while waiting for the mandate issues to be addressed, which is purely a legislative matter.

“We are already in touch with Nasarawa State University and University of Jos in this regard to mount B.Tech and postgraduate programmes. We are also looking seriously into improving our entrepreneurial skills such that our graduates will be able to be self-employed after passing through the institution.”