The recent report of the Presidential Committee on NEEDS Assessments of Nigerian Public Polytechnics and Colleges of Education recommending the removal of disparity between polytechnics’ Higher National Diploma (HND) and university’s first degree is a proposal whose consequences would be counterproductive if not given critical reconsideration. Being a typical half-measured solution that seldom gets to the root of the matter, it is a hasty gambit into a needless expediency.
Coming in the wake of a series of negotiations that have just culminated in the suspension of the nearly one-year old strike organised by the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), the recommendation is merely a temporary palliative to a problem that demands thoughtful long-term solution.
The strike, which began with the issuance of a 21-day ultimatum on March 25, 2013, was hinged, among others, on the abrogation of the National Board for Technical Education as the regulatory body of Nigerian Polytechnics, to be replaced with National Polytechnics Commission (NPC); the constitution of Governing Councils for all the Federal Polytechnics and Colleges of Education; the non-release of the White Paper on the visitations to Federal polytechnics; failure to commence the NEEDS Assessment of Nigerian Polytechnics by the Federal Government, including the worrisome situation of state-owned Polytechnics in the country; and the non-commencement of the re-negotiation of the FGN/ASUP agreement as contained in the signed agreement.
The summary of all these grievances is simply wrongful and stereotyped perception of polytechnic education, poor funding and relegation of the polytechnics and lip-service to technical education.
Considering the initial insensitivity of this administration and the mocking silence of Nigerians to the strike, the Federal Government’s response has not been effective. This recommendation is consequent upon an overly emphasis on paper qualification or certificate consciousness. It is not enough to change the name of a polytechnic merely because one desires that it awards degree, the founding objective, which includes the societal needs, and the attitude of Nigerians are also worth considering.
There is, of course, a counterproductive and completely wrong attitude of Nigerians to polytechnic education. Parents, teachers, students and even the general public itself have constantly relayed attitudinal dispositions that disregard polytechnic education. More often than not, polytechnics are seen as the last resort for students who have been frustrated by non-admission into the university after years of frequent attempts at the university matriculation examinations. Parents seem to subscribe to it as the alternative tertiary education when all attempts at gaining university admission have failed. Even students, after gaining admission into polytechnics, make frantic moves to still gain university admission.
It should, therefore, not be surprising that this arrant display of apathy and disdain towards polytechnic education has rubbed off on the nation’s leaders, who ought to know better.
If stakeholders (students, administrators, employees) wrongly view it as a phase in educational development that is devoid of any value, how then do they expect a clueless government to pursue its cause?
Thus the clamour for parity on the part of students and lecturers in the polytechnics may well be a bitter expression of inferiority complex; for the desire to obtain desserts for its sake because some other non-relational party has such desserts, does not sit well in the scale of distributive justice. Who says a well-trained polytechnic graduate needs a university degree? What informs the thinking that a polytechnic lecturer, if he does his work as productively as it should be done, cannot receive a higher salary than his counterpart in the university?
Clearly, polytechnic graduates are as useful to the country as much as university graduates and Nigerians should encourage places for excellence in different areas of competence. Moreover, the university and the polytechnic have different objectives based on their utility value to society. While the university aims to produce the cultured, public-spirited and conscientious intellectual that would transform the immediate environment and contribute to global culture and civilisation, the polytechnic is geared towards the production of the enlightened workforce that would advance the instrument of economic production and infrastructural development, and help the society on the path of industrialisation.
Should the panel’s recommendation be heeded, will the nomenclature of their certificates remove the perceived discrimination between polytechnics and universities? Will it change Nigerians’ perception of polytechnics? Will it make graduates of polytechnics better theoreticians and less than the practical technology-oriented workforce, if that is what they want? Besides, there is an obvious negligence of the manpower component in this consideration. If polytechnics are to become degree-awarding, will the performance appraisal of their lecturers be like the university’s? It is clear, therefore, that disparity is a wrong consideration.
While both aspects of tertiary education are fitting in their respective rights, they should be assessed in terms of their capacity and competence. Employers of labour should be aware of these factors and be entitled to make their choice between either of the graduates, depending on how they would satisfy needs.
In spite of the report and the suspended strike, there are some lessons to be learnt. The polytechnics should not diminish their utmost relevance to national development by trivializing strikes, and turning them into a clamour for mere nomenclature of their certificates. The greater import of the strike should be on its potential to sensitize Nigerians about the rot that has engulfed the education and technology sectors. It should resonate as a counsel against the vacuity associated with vainglorious rampage over allowances rather than genuine pursuit of a wholesome development of the polity.
ASUP and other stakeholders should not be deluded by this ‘quick fix’ of parity between polytechnic graduates and university graduates. They should ensure that efforts are not on the way to systematically pray the nunc dimitis of technological education in the country.
ASUP should direct its arsenal on the ineptitude and mendacious posture of an administration that pays lip service to technological development and highlight the folly and the glaring contradiction of a nation that seeks to be industrialised by 2020 and is bereft of the minutest rudiments to start an action plan for industrialisation. For how does a nation sustain a maintenance culture without a technical/technological education?
The issue is neither parity nor certificate, but quality and competence as well as the utility value of all graduates.
