Nigeria’s quest to rank among the top 20 nations in the world by 2020 is doubtful, if the technical colleges, which will facilitate industrialisation, don’t function optimally, according to education stakeholders.
They expressed this view while responding to a nationwide survey on the status of technical colleges in the country.
The survey was conducted by the News Agency of Nigeria.
The respondents decried the poor condition of the colleges, some of which the survey revealed had been converted to secondary schools by some state governments.
Others still existing in their original status, they said, lacked modern equipment and other necessary facilities for teaching and learning, while also facing the problem of poor funding and the dearth of qualified manpower.
Corroborating their views, Mike Offor, the Director of Technology and Science of the Federal Ministry of Education, told NAN in Abuja: “No country can develop without technical education and technical manpower.”
Offor, however, said that that the ministry was working towards reviving technical education in Nigeria by providing modern equipment and infrastructure needed to operate optimally.
He said: “The schools are functioning up to the level of infrastructure on ground.
“The Ministry of Education evolved Technical, Industrial, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training to revive technical education in Nigeria.
“It is one of the focal plans.
“It aims at wealth creation, poverty eradication and technological growth.
“We are giving it much attention.”
Offor added that technical education was capital intensive and as such required private sector participation.
According to him, the equipment in technical colleges were not being upgraded as at and when due.
“Previously, we talked about analogue, but now, we are talking about digital age,” he said.
To fast track the process of reviving technical education, Offor said: “We are getting interventions from the African Development Bank project for technical education through which we procure modern equipment for our technical colleges.”
Apart from the lack of modern equipment, education stakeholders listed other challenges hindering the performance of technical colleges as policy inconsistency, poor funding and dearth of manpower, among others.
In Akwa Ibom State, the Permanent Secretary of the State Technical Schools Board, Scholastica Usoh, identified the dearth of core technical teachers as the major impediment to the teaching and learning of technical and entrepreneurial courses.
Usoh told NAN in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital, that state lacked qualified technical teachers in its colleges.
According to her, the state has six government-owned technical colleges, with a total student population of 14,749 and 681 staff, of which 437 were teaching staff, while 244 are non-teaching staff.
He said: “Our major challenge is that we do not have qualified and certified manpower to teach the 35 entrepreneurial subjects that we have in the colleges.”
Usoh, however, said that the state government had improved facilities in the schools with the provision of computer centres in all the six colleges last year.
Corroborating the Usoh’s comments, Alphonsus Akpan, the Vice Principal of one of the colleges, Union Technical College, Ikpa, said that manpower was a serious handicap in the system.
Akpan listed the courses offered in the school to include Motor Vehicle Mechanic Work, Electrical Installation and Maintenance work, Fabrication and Welding.
Others are Mechanical Engineering Craft practice, Building Technology and Wood Woks and Furniture.
“The ratio of teachers to students is 1: 50; the number of teachers we have are not many; we don’t have teachers in some subjects,” Akpan said.
Akpan also spoke of dilapidated structures and the lack of perimeter fence to secure the students and equipment.
“Government should give technical teachers incentives to motivate and encourage them and also provide infrastructure so that technical education can thrive,” Akpan appealed.
In a separate interview, Moses Akinloye, a lecturer at Heritage Polytechnic, Eket, urged government to make technical education attractive to both teachers and students.
“Government should revisit the original intention of setting up technical colleges, see how we can revive and change the attitude of the people towards the colleges,” Akinloye said.
Akinloye, who teaches Applied Chemistry, stressed the need for the government to provide the enabling environment for more students to enrol in technical colleges.
He said that most polytechnics offered courses they were not supposed to run because of the government policy of rating polytechnics lower than universities.
The lecturer said that mass failure in Mathematics in the SSCE constituted “a great threat” to technical education in the country.
He called for the training and re-training of teachers, stressing that teachers should be equipped with modern techniques of teaching mathematics to the students.
In his opinion, a parent in Eket, Sunday Batta, said that the major problem of technical education was that teachers were not adequately motivated.
Batta said: “The problem is that our teachers are not well motivated, so they are not giving their best.
“Teachers are now into buying and selling even in the classrooms in order to make ends meet.”
In Enugu State, Benjamin Okenwa, a Senior Lecturer at the Enugu State College of Education (Technical), blamed the situation of technical colleges on policy inconsistency on the part of the government.
According to Okenwa of the Department of Electrical/Electronics, policy inconsistency in regard to vocational studies is the bane of Nigeria’s industrialisation.
He said that the lack of clear-cut policies on technical studies had affected the psyche of teachers who had embraced that field of study.
He said: “The policy makers are our problems and that is why China will continue to flood our markets with inferior products because we have not got it right.
“The condition of technical schools speaks volumes of the decay in the system.
“No nation can rise above its teachers.
“Our teachers are not well motivated and that has changed their attitude.”
Okenwa said that the attitude of teachers was one of the major causes of increasing failure rate in Mathematics in schools.
He said: “You may have enough Mathematics teachers but the implements necessary for effective teaching may not be there.”
He further stressed that Nigeria needed to develop its vocational sector based on local content.
Okenwa added: “Emphasis on certificates must be dropped.
“There is the need to blend primitive skills and talents with the theory we learn in our schools to get the best.
“You may not know how to read and write but are talented in one particular trade.
“Government needs to support such people to contribute to national development.
“We need a blend of raw skills and theoretical knowledge.
“Craftsmen are almost non-existent.
“We import tillers and builders from neighbouring West African countries because emphasis is now on quick money.”
Okenwa said that the panacea for the ugly trend was a revival of the country’s educational system from the core.
He said: “You start from the primary schools to lay the foundation with emphasis on technical schools.”
He said that government needed to equip technical colleges across the country to achieve the set goal.
He added: “Enugu State can boast of no fewer than 20 technical colleges, but how many of them can boast of equipment.
“Most of them run glorified technical courses devoid of practical learning.”
In a separate interview, Perpetua Aniofoegbu, another lecturer, said the prospect of achieving robust industrialisation of the country under the present circumstance, where poor funding held sway, was slim.
Aniofoegbu said: “It is not possible to achieve industrialisation without technical education, which is the pivot of development.
“The problem is the kind of education that was introduced to us by our colonial masters, which is reading, writing and recitation.
“Awareness should be created about technical education while government should train the manpower and fund it.
“Our technical colleges do not have equipment, while the ones that have are outdated.
“Government needs to equip them because these are the areas where you can produce the manpower that can help in the development of technology.”
However, Obini Onuchukwu, the Director of Public Relations and Protocol of the Federal Polytechnic, Oko, Anambra State, said that the polytechnics had not deviated from their mandate.
Onuchukwu said that though the polytechnics had introduced courses that were outside their mandate, the focus on technical education had not waned.
He said: “We have not thrown away our mandate, which is vocational education.
“But as the world moves from one developmental level to the other, a lot needs to change in order to improve the standard of life.”
In Benue State, Rose Igoh, the Executive Secretary of Benue Science and Technical Education Board, told NAN in Makurdi that all science and technical colleges in the state lacked basic amenities, equipment and teachers for effective learning.
Igoh told NAN that four out of the 10 schools were owned by the government, two by non-governmental agencies, while the remaining four were owned by private proprietors.
She said that that government-owned schools lacked basic facilities such as laboratories, teachers, water, power, furniture and beds.
She said: “For instance, there is no dinning section at Special Science School, Makurdi; Science and Technical Colleges at Anyiin, Garaboghol and Otukpa, among others.
“It is unfortunate that majority of the government-owned schools do not have beds for the students and they are currently sleeping on the floor.”
NAN reports that the contractors handling projects at Science and Technical Schools located at Anyii, Garaboghol and Otukpa had abandoned them.
NAN also recalls that Godwin Adah, the then commissioner for Science and Technology, was sacked in 2013, two weeks after he briefed journalists on the abandonment of the projects.
Adah had told newsmen after the inspection of the projects that that 80 per cent of the total contract sum had been paid to contractors.
He had said: “Over N800 million projects involving renovation and conversion of three old Government Secondary Schools in the state into science and technical schools were all abandoned by contractors.
“The government has paid all the contractors in this ministry.
“So it is the fault of the contractors who are already playing politics with the contracts.”
In Zamfara State, Alhaji Abubakar Liman, the Rector of Abdu-Gusau Polytechnic, Talata Mafara, said that science and technical education was key to national development.
Liman said that any country that wanted to achieve economic development must give much priority to science and technology.
He said: “If you look at the advanced countries in the world like the G7, they record a lot of economic development because they give much attention and priority the sector.”
The rector, therefore appealed to governments at all levels in the country to give priority to science and technical education.
Liman said that the school had recorded a lot of achievements due to TETfund intervention.
He said this had enabled the institution to provide engineering materials worth over N50 million.
According to him, the school has constructed 10 engineering workshops and 11 laboratories for science and engineering courses.
He commended both the federal and state governments for their support toward the development of the institution.
In a separate interview, Malam Nura Musa, the Chairman of Concerned Youths for Awareness and Development, an NGO based in Zamfara State, attributed the poor performance of students in both mathematics and technical subjects to inadequate teachers and practical equipment.
Musa noted that for Nigeria to realise effective science and technical education, it must provide enough professional teachers and equipment to technical colleges.
In Dutse, Jigawa State, Dr. Habibu Sara, the Executive Secretary of the Jigawa Science and Technical Board, tasked governments at all levels to embark on a sensitisation campaign to boost enrolment in science and technical education.
Sara harped on the need to sensitise and orientate children on the importance of the importance of science and technical education.
He said: “Many children refused to be enrolled because they felt science colleges were meant for the children of the poor and those that attended conventional schools were rated higher than those from science and technical colleges.”
The executive secretary said that science and technical education was critical in tackling the unemployment problem in the country.
According to Sara, the four science and technical colleges located in Hadejia, Birnin kudu, Karkarna and Ringim have a total student population of 2,887 students.
He said that they offer subjects like carpentry, automobile technology, electrical and electronics engineering, craft practices and building technology.
Sara, however, expressed concern that in spite of the motivation by the government through the well equipped workshops and accreditation of the courses by the National Board for Technical Education, the teachers often left in search of greener pastures.
Meanwhile, Malam Abdullahi Adamu, a parent, claimed that inadequate or lack of equipment and manpower discouraged them from enrolling their children into technical colleges.
Adamu alleged that government was not serious in reviving science and technical education.
In Gombe State, Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed, the Registrar of the Federal College of Education (Technical), urged governments at all levels to ensure adequate funding of technical schools to ensure that development goals were realised.
Mohammed said since technical education was capital intensive, proper funding of technical colleges was imperative for the procurement of machinery and the training of qualified technicians and middle level manpower.
He said: “It is not going to be possible for Nigeria to become one of the 20 top nations without a vibrant technical sector.”
According to him, technical education is a very fundamental area because it propels any nation for technological development.
Also commenting on the issue, a teacher in one of the technical schools, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said professional teachers in technical education was lacking just as modern machinery for learning.
A parent, Malam Ahmadu Abubakar, called on the government to employ qualified teachers to teach Mathematics, being a foundation subject for technical education.
Abubakar also stressed the need to encourage students to develop interest in the field.
“If the teachers are qualified, definitely the students will develop interest because qualified teachers always have a way of imparting knowledge to their students,” he said.
Echoing the concerns of other respondents, stakeholders in the education sub-sector in Bayelsa State called for urgent attention to technical education in order to realise the dream in efforts to make Nigeria industrialised nation.
They expressed their disenchantment over the apparent neglect of technical education in Nigeria and urged the three tiers of government to provide facilities for learning in technical colleges across the country.
In an interview with NAN, Dr. Jeremiah Yabefa, the Rector of the Bayelsa State College of Arts and Science, said: “Polytechnics are usually technical-oriented but when the facilities are not available, you cannot help it.
“I must tell you, technical education is the key as far as industrialisation is concerned in this country.
“The private sector and individuals have roles to play in improving technical education.”
Kenneth Owei, a Secondary School Principal, also observed that the lack of facilities for learning constituted a major challenge to technical colleges.
Owie said: “Most students do not enrol into technical subjects due to inadequate facilities.
“Right now, we do not have laboratory for technical subjects.
“To achieve efficient technical education in Nigeria, we must first of all improve on the facility and manpower.”
However, a parent, Lambo Egi, who is also a Lecturer in the Bayelsa State Collage of Art and Science, said that manpower was readily available to improve technical education.
Egi urged the parents to counsel their children to embrace technical education.
In Oyo State, Prof. Solomon Olaniyonu, the Commissioner for Education, said that the government was prioritising technical and vocational education, hence the establishment of these technical colleges in the state.
Olaniyonu said that there were more technical teachers in the state than students, putting the ration at one to 30.
“Some of these colleges, especially that of Aperin in Ibadan, are even better equipped than some of the Federal Government-owned technical schools.”
He, however, said that these colleges were confronted by the twin challenges of inadequate workshops and funding.
“Although these technical colleges have been getting their due budgetary allocations annually, yet they still desire better funding in order to rank with their peers in other climes,” he said.
Olaniyonu said for Nigeria to be ranked among the best 20 economies in the world by the year 2020, the Federal Government must provide intervention funds for technical and vocational education in the country.
“This is why (Governor Abiola) Ajimobi’s administration has been prioritising technical education development,” he said.
He said that this informed the decision of the state government to attract the partnership of Chinese experts for manpower development.
In his remarks, Bashir Olarenwaju, the Chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress in Oyo State, told NAN that it was the responsibility of the government to develop manpower to drive the economy and create wealth for the nation.
“Once the masses are employed, their purchasing power would be enhanced,” Olanrewaju said.
He also said that the involvement of Chinese technicians and other expatriates in the agriculture and construction sectors was detrimental to the economy.
He said: “Whatever profit they make, they always repatriate back home and this has been leading to capital flight.
“So government must develop competent manpower and create employment in other to generate more revenue.”
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