What it takes to establish a polytechnic – Dr Kazaure
Dr. Masa'udu Adamu Kazaure is the Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE). In this interview he speaks on the challenges of technical education.
What effort are you making to improve the quality of technical and vocational education?
For too long we have been accused that our artisans, master craftsmen, technicians and others do not perform well when compared with those in the neigbouring countries like Cameroun, Niger and Benin. This came out as a result of the fact that we are not doing what they normally do, which is national vocational qualification, which is not only done in most African countries, but all over the world for best practices.
But we have started doing that since in 2010, though NBTE started in 2004, but not much progress was made that time until from 2009 to 2010.
Government gave approval for a steering committee which worked for two and a half years and gave recommendation that we had to do occupational standards and the last time it was done in the country was in 1964.
In 2013 the National Executive Council gave the approval for the construction of our own occupational standard. We had issue of funding because to do occupational standard you need to assemble a team of experts, and we assembled about 150 experts to do the occupational standard and construction.
We did this specifically not on any needs but on people who had interest in what we were doing. We now have occupational standards in about 13 areas, including carpentry, electrical installation, POP making, tilling, among others. These are the skills we have adopted to measure up to other artisans that come from the neighbouring countries and the standard required by the private sector.
What does it take to establish a polytechnic?
I am very proud of the private sector and this is where I give kudos to the government in involving the private sector in delivering technical and conventional education to the people. Prior to this, we had about 18 private polytechnics, now there is a mad rush for private polytechnics simply because we decreased the conditions. Before 2001 and 2002 it took about five years to get a licence but now if you are serious within one and half years you will get your approval.
What is required of you to get a private polytechnic before is about 50 hectares of land but now it has been reduced to 10 hectares.
To establish a polytechnic you need mechanical, electrical and civil engineering units and that is where you need a large amount of money to get the equipment, and nothing less than N500 million is required to get the equipment for these engineering courses.
We try as much as possible to encourage the private sector to start with the simplest of the engineering course: which is electrical engineering, where you need about N80 to 100 million to get the equipment.
To get any vocational centre approved by NBTE you need a minimum of N1 billion to procure equipment, then infrastructure. You need a lab, hostel and other things. So to get a technical college or vocational centre from the scratch, you need about N774 billion; it is not an easy thing for the government to do right now.
For a monotechnic, you need almost the same amount of money to establish a monotechnic because almost the same equipment is needed just that polytechnics are broader.
How are these polytechnics sourcing their funds?
Technically, polytechnic is a system of education whereby when you leave it to itself, if everything is working perfectly alright, you won’t need to bother about funding.
When there is electricity, the industries will be there and once the industries are there, they must have to have links to technical institutions. So, with the two not around, it informs the reason why polytechnics derailed because they kept on producing graduates in engineering that were not being employed. Unless otherwise but if we don’t have these two things ready, we are not moving.
All over the world, wherever you go you will find out that industries are the funders of technical and vocational education because one thing is when you are on the production line, once there is problem they call on technical institutions to come and solve the problem and that is how research emanates and that is how we can get money.
Does that mean you cannot do much since the industries are not there?
We have not been doing much because the funds from the government are limited, because everybody needs money from government and the resources are limited. It is unfortunate. Every parent will want his ward to go to the university and that is why government gives more emphasis to university education.
Has the issue of HND/BSC dichotomy been addressed?
It has not been addressed. Last year we were in Minna where there was a vote of 16 against 16 and the Head of Service voted for us but up till now we have not gotten any response from the Head of Service.
Unless we remove that barrier where a graduate of HND cannot cross level 14, I think no parent will like technical or vocational education.
How have you been able to address the issue of illegal polytechnics in the country?
We have been addressing it through the anti-corruption agencies. I reported to EFCC, ICPC and even the DSS office. We are really working on that. Out of the zeal to provide technical education in the country, some went ahead even with a small place to say they have stated a polytechnic to offer diploma and higher diploma.
We went ahead to document 63 cases in 2013 and published them and somewhere we realised that before we qualify you as an illegal institution, we have to make a visit to the website to get your details and after we invite you.
I am happy to say out of these 63 we have documented, more than half have gotten approval from us, because we advised them and gave them the guidance on what to do to get approval. However, it is only the Minister of Education that can give you license to operate a private polytechnic.
The Presidential Committee on the North East Initiative is said to be working with you, what role are you playing in addressing challenges facing the insurgency-ravaged region?
They visited my office about two months ago and we had an extensive discussion. I have shown them a model we have been doing on northern Nigeria skilling programme: which is sponsored by DFID. It is a programme that intends to produce about 68,000 skilled personnel in three years, and the aim is to address these youths that are unemployed, especially those that have not gone to school.
So after our discussion, we agreed to adopt that model. I advised the committee to embrace this approach and train these youths.
What the youths need is a kind of skill to do one thing or the other because they have enjoyed freedom and therefore, there is no way you can take them to a school and put them there. So you have to be flexible and follow them to where they are. Some of them have the skill but it is not perfect, so you can only perfect it when you subject the trainee through the rudiments of the standards. But since two months ago when we had the meeting, nothing has been done.
The quality of Nigerian graduates has come under questioning, with arguments that they do not meet the requirement of the industries and the NUC has commenced the process of reinventing the curricula. Are we likely to see anything coming from the board?
When we talk about the curricular, we have to look at the contemporary age that we are in now, the curricular that were produced around the 1980’s cannot go with the machines that are being produced in this 21st Century. We have a case where we procured equipment in 2012 and supplied to about 51 federal and state polytechnics across the country, and we found out that the curricula that are there do not match with the machines, so we had to do a kind of rigorous review of the curricular at that time.
Curricular is a legal mechanism. What we have at NBTE is that we do a minimum standard and institutions are expected to put it at the level to suit their environment.
We have close to about 280 curricular, now operational; some of them have been produced as way back as the 80’s but as I am talking to you now I have my staff with the ITF, close to 20, doing a new curriculum.
You have to look at the contemporary time we are in and the cutting edge technology. When we are talking about mechanical engineering, the world is talking about mechatronics: a combination of mechanical and electronics or things that have precision, but the worst thing about it is that we don’t have the industries; so even when you produce the graduates we end up producing graduates that will get out of the country to get employment.