National Board for Technical Education NBTE has pledged to work closely with the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria COREN to achieve the best for engineering sector in Nigeria.
The Executive Secretary of the Board, Professor Idris M. Bugaje made this known when received the President of COREN on a courtesy visit in Kaduna.
Professor Bugaje said engineering sector has suffered for a very long period of time in Nigeria and it curriculum has been out of date for long.
According to him, some of the ND and HND Engineering Curricula had not been reviewed for about 20 years while the budget in that sector has been low.
“Unfortunately the state of Engineering in Nigeria is very poor in terms of productivity and Industrialization. I am not blaming the engineers, I’m blaming the Nigeria state it self for allowing basic infrastructure for Industrialization to collapse”
“The Electricity we have in Nigeria is one of the lowest in Africa, at the moment, if you think of 6000 megawatt divide it by the population of Nigerians, our capital is 30 watt”
“South Africa has over 400 watt per capital, Egypt has another 450 watt per capital and Nigeria cannot industrialized with 30 watt per capital”
He lamented that, Engineering profession has been moving forward with the current technological development, stressing that, alot of manufacturing processing are now digitalize and mechatronics are involved.
“Our curriculum has not been upgraded because NBTE has been poorly funded over the years. We get of the average 50 to 70 million naira every year to review over three hundred curricula.
Professor Bugaje also Stated that, NBTE is reaching out to industries, COREN and other stakeholders to joint hand with them to upgrade engineering curriculum of Polytechnics.
He stressed the need for government to convert some of Universities to Polytechnics to produce skills man power for Industrialization.
According to him, the only hope for the Nigerian Engineers is to move to the Skills informal Sector, argueing that, in the whole country if not Lagos and Ogun no any other State has industries except few in Kano.
“At the moment, we are trying to engage Panteka, Kofar Ruwa in Kano, Mechanic Village in Abuja, and other informal Sector to formalise their training skills to enable engineering graduates to benefit from their skills”
He said delegation were in NBTE headquarters to discuss Engineering training especially in the Polytechnics skills sector.
Professor Bugaje further revealed that, the Nigerian economy is seventy five percent informal Sector, urged government to give more attention to the sector.
He commended COREN over the introduction of Digital accreditation inorder to meet international standard.
In a remark, the President of the Council for the Regulation of Engineering COREN, Professor Professor Sadiq Abubakar said the purpose of the visit was to have a technical meeting with the E.S of NBTE on how to reposition engineering and technology education at the level of Polytechnics, Mono Technics, Technical Colleges and informal sector.
Professor Sadiq Abubakar expressed optimism over the coming to have formal discussion with the Management of NBTE in many areas that they initially discussed and itemized.
Hexplained that, over the years COREN has identified alot of gaps in engineering sector that requires urgent attention.
The President of the Council said the current management of COREN are committed to bringing positive change in their mandate and responsibility.
COV/AMINU DALHATU
