The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has faulted the federal directive to polytechnics in the country to stop running and awarding degrees with immediate effect.
The government through the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) this week banned the country’s polytechnics from running and awarding degrees.
In a swift reaction to the government order, ASUP National President, Mr Anderson Ezeibe, said the union would not be deterred by the directive and insisted the polytechnics have the required manpower, facilities and curricula to award degrees.
He added: “We understand that this is a regurgitation of a directive flowing from a meeting in the Federal Ministry of Education on the same issue sometime in June 2022.
“The directives and the outcome of the so-called meeting in the Federal Ministry of Education is the product of indolent thought processes by persons who are more interested in unnecessary gatekeeping, policy and administrative inertia as well as conservative dispositions as against the new order of liberal thinking and dynamism which is associated with tertiary education globally.”
Ezeibe wondered why the federal government is yet to issue such a directive to universities offering diploma programmes and other sub-degree certifications.
According to him, the directive is an extension of the discrimination against Nigerian polytechnics whose foundation was laid and is still nourished by policies of the Nigerian government as seen in the infamous HND/ degree dichotomy.
“The conservative disposition and indolence as seen in undue regimentation in the name of supervision and regulation of tertiary education in Nigeria have seen the nation completely derail in providing functional education to its teeming youthful population.
“As a nation, we have been left behind by the rest of the world including fellow and less endowed African nations in terms of educational development due to our backward and retrogressive disposition, ” he noted.”
Ezeibe explained that institutions award degrees up to postgraduate levels irrespective of their name in other climes as long as the requirements for such certification are met, adding, “why should Nigeria be different”?
He continued: “It is even more baffling that the federal government has not come out to say that the polytechnics do not have the requisite manpower, infrastructure nor the curricula for degree certification.
“Even the legal framework for such is in place for the polytechnics in the Federal Polytechnics Act (2019) amendment. Yet the nation’s educational development is bogged down by conservative and archaic thought processes and policies by functionaries, institutions and agencies of the government.”
He advised policymakers in tertiary education space to hold liberal and constructive positions in the national interest by allowing polytechnics with the requisite competence in terms of curricula, manpower and infrastructure to award degrees and at the same time expand the access to degree certification for desirous young Nigerians as the current space is not satisfying the huge demand.
Ezeibe revealed that the constant manpower migration from polytechnics would be arrested and the age-long dichotomy against HND certification would be put to rest once and for all.
He warned: ‘Our union will not be deterred by this directive. Rather we are going to get more energized in our demand for liberation from the plot to completely destroy the Nigerian Polytechnic System through such deleterious policies.
“Our policymakers should also be liberated from the captivity of conservative and indolent thought processes into an era of a vibrant tertiary education system marked by intellectual adventure and other requisites needed to make us globally competitive and nationally relevant.”
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