NBTE Decries Poor Funding Of Polytechnics
By Stephen Olufemi Oni, Ilorin
The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has decried inadequate funding of the polytechnics, particularly by state governments.
The technical education regulatory agency said inadequate funding of the polytechnics is responsible for the shortage of technical manpower in the country.
The north central coordinator of NBTE, Dr Musa Koko, stated this at a workshop organised by the Federal Polytechnic, Offa on the institution’s “2021-2024 Strategic Plan Critique Workshop” in Offa on Wednesday.
Koko lamented that state governments were not providing adequate funds for the infrastructural development of the state-owned polytechnics, thereby making expansion of technical programmes impossible in the institutions.
He called on the federal government to ensure that the polytechnics’ curriculum is tailored towards the nation’s industrial needs.
Earlier, the chairman of the 2021/2024 strategic planning committee who is also the deputy rector of the polytechnic, Dr Augustine Adama, said the workshop was aimed at ensuring inclusion of inputs from the relevant stakeholders in the final copy of the action plan.
He said the institution had successfully implemented its strategic plan for 2017- 2019.
In her presentation, the dean of Research and Innovation at the institution, Dr Grace Korter, said that the institution’s strategic plan is aimed at increasing the students population into some programmes that are less populated when situationally compared with some other programmes being offered by the institution.
She said the strategic plan also aimed at changing gender imbalance between male and female students in the institution, which, she said, currently affects female students in some programmes.