The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has reiterated that Polytechnic graduates should acquire the necessary knowledge and entrepreneurial skills and not only paper qualifications.
The Executive Secretary of the Board Prof. Idris Bugaje, stated this at the opening ceremony of a four-day workshop organised in collaboration with Danglo Management and Financial Limited, and sponsored by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, TETFUND, in Bauchi.
According to him, “Graduates are expected to become self-employed by starting their small-scale businesses since it’s now apparently clear that the government cannot employ all graduates of higher institutions.”
DAILY POST reports that the workshop involved about 250 lecturers drawn from polytechnics, mono-technics and related technical institutions from Adamawa, Bauchi, Gombe, Maiduguri, Taraba and Yobe states.
The workshop was organised to strengthen and review entrepreneurship and skills development curricula for entrepreneurship educators in Nigerian polytechnics and similar institutions.
Bugaje said the workshop would provide an opportunity to rub minds and come up with a roadmap on how to strengthen entrepreneurship training in institutions of higher learning, particularly the polytechnics.
Represented by Iliyasu Mohammed, Bugaje further explained that the Federal Government had shown commitment to entrepreneurship education and since 2006, had directed all institutions of higher learning to commence entrepreneurship education as a course.
“The polytechnics commenced entrepreneurship as a course in their programmes from the 2007/2008 academic session.
“The NBTE also keyed into the Federal Government directives by ensuring that entrepreneurship education was inculcated in the curriculum of the polytechnic education.”
Bugaje reiterated that the Board also embarked on a massive review of its curricula in order to incorporate entrepreneurship training in all the academic programmes of polytechnics.
Also speaking, Dr Bello Bashir, the Special Assistant to the Executive Secretary, said the Board’s focus had changed from degree acquisition to skill proficiency and employment creation due to changing times and modern needs.
