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Engineers seek review of curriculum, revival of technical colleges

By Victor Gbonegun
07 December 2020   |   4:06 am
To bridge the gap between the industry and the academia, the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), has restated the need to revive technical training colleges. The society also deplored the non-involvement of engineers in infrastructural projects, which they attributed to the mentality that foreigners are better than indigenous engineers. The incoming…

To bridge the gap between the industry and the academia, the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE), has restated the need to revive technical training colleges.

The society also deplored the non-involvement of engineers in infrastructural projects, which they attributed to the mentality that foreigners are better than indigenous engineers.

The incoming chairman of the branch, Tosin Ogunmola, who stated this in a chat with newsmen in Lagos, said NSE is however, set to empower practitioners in professional development and to elevate engineering practice.

Ogunmola explained that what widens the gaps between the town and gown, bothers on the use of old curriculum to address 21st century challenges, stressing that there was need to ensure that engineering curriculum is updated.

“As we are not exposing our graduates to the industry and we have challenges, whereby some of the students that supposed to go for industrial training don’t even have industries to undergo the programme. We’re now looking at the effectiveness of the industrial training programme. NDE is partnering the Industrial Training Fund (ITF). We are also studying engineering legislations to ensure that students posted to industries won’t be rejected.”

“We will be looking at raising at least the sum of N100million over the next nine months to undertake the implementation of the initiatives and search for prospective partners to work with us. Industries, government, technical schools and colleges must re-activate training schemes as the universities can’t do it alone.

The chairman said engineers are already collaborating with the branches of NSE to create a working group, which will work for the implementation of the executive order five recently passed by the Federal Government.

A member of the inauguration committee, Ajibola Olajide, an engineer, explained that the dearth of skills among local engineering firms have robbed them of participating in many infrastructural projects.

On his part, Femi Kupolako, advised members to mobilise engineers to participate in governance, adding that if engineers are not adequately represented in the Federal Executive Council and the National Assembly, policy makers would make policies that favour them.

The Past Chairman, Ikeja branch, Mr. Akintayo Akinola, urged parents to send their wards to technical colleges to revive the schools, which are going into extinction due to non-enrolment by young Nigerians.

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