Federal polytechnics in Nigeria are losing accreditation of course because of serious dearth of requisite academic staff.
This is as a result of government’s embargo on employment.
A source at the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), the regulatory body of polytechnics and technical colleges in the country said that some of the institutions visited by NBTE for quality assurance have failed accreditation owing to the acute shortage of requisite manpower.
Under the normative instruments of the regulatory body, availability of the right mix of staff is a key requirement for course accreditation.
According to available information, the Executive Secretary of NBTE, Prof Idris Bugaje and the Committee of Federal Rectors (COFER), the umbrella body of Rectors of Federal polytechnics, worried by the development, have severally written a Save Our Soul (SOS) to the Minister of Education and Head of Civil Service of the Federation for intervention.
It was also gathered the NBTE boss in a letter with ref No. C/TEB.564/VOL.II/331 dated 10th May 2021 to Head of Service of the Federation, lamented: “The sector presently suffers from inadequate technical manpower due to inability to replace retired staff and those who died.
“This is causing impediments in maintaining current training programmes not to talk of adding new ones”.
He identified some of the new programmes as Railway Engineering, Gas Engineering and Mechatronics Engineering appealing her intervention, warning however ïf the polytechnics are not allowed to do the replacements, it will bring down the quality of out TVET products and prevent rolling out new ones”.
