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