According to report monitored by Channels TV at this week COREN Assembly, the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari has identified the absence of up to date curriculum as the major cause of the low quality of engineering products in Nigeria.
The President made the observation on Tuesday while speaking at an occasion organised by professional engineers in Nigeria held in Akure, the capital of Ondo State.
‘A Wide Gap’
Represented by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Engr Babachir Lawal, ( Afellow of Nigerian Society of Engineers) President Buhari revealed that the obsolete curriculum had created a wide gap between engineers trained in Nigeria and those trained abroad.
He implored professional engineers in Nigeria to work together with the various relevant stakeholders towards improving the practice of engineering in Nigeria.
He also called for the rebuilding of the engineering curriculum to meet current global demands.
On his part, the Ondo State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, emphasised the negative trend in which most of the capital investments in Nigeria come from financial products while actual industry products have declined.
He insisted that it was the political economy of an era that drives development, noting that there is the need to pay attention to the development of local industries.
In an interview with Channels Television, the Minister of Water Resources, Engineer Suleiman Adamu and a professor in the field of engineering who was onetime Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State, Professor Faborode gave some solutions to the challenges confronting the development of engineering education and practice in Nigeria.
The theme of the conference is “Embracing the future: improving the quality of Engineering education and practice in Nigeria”.
Up to date and current best practice curriculum is not and never the problem with engineering in Nigeria but the lack of proper understanding of the uniqueness and application of the profession.
One way government has demonstrated this lack of understanding is rating of Degree and HND to be the same in the Nigerian Civil Service.
Ingeniers, with Degrees, evolve the know-how (or technology) while the HNDs (called technologists) deploys or applies this know-how.
By UK standard, HND is a 2-year programme split into 5 years for better understanding and emphasis on tactical implementation while Degree is a 5 year programme. This difference in the (3) year-worth of studies is the reason one enters the civil service on 7 while the other is 8.
Both Nigeria and USA were colonized by Britain but America reduced their HND to two year-degree to suit it while Nigeria decided to over-rate her HND to be same as degree. That is not just the problem, the Technologists are assigned the jobs of Ingeniers and vice versa with obvious but unrealized consequences.