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Gyang Bere, Jos
It appears the payment of Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES), initiated to reduce the premium on paper qualification in Nigeria is overwhelming the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) coupled with the number of accredited institutions involved in the scheme.
The scheme pays over 2 millions Nigerian students stipends from 262 tertiary institutions and other allied institutions for the SIWES programme running into billions of Naira.
The SIWES scheme was initiated primarily to provide students of engineering, technical and allied disciplines with practical experience of the real work situations they would encounter after graduation.
But inadequate funding by the Federal Government has remained a major impediment to the scheme. Payment of stipends to graduating students has become a serious challenge to ITF.
In most cases, students graduate from the various institutions in the country before they are paid their stipends due to late release of ITF budgetary allocation. Sadly, the number of students involved in the scheme yearly has increased progressively but the funding of the scheme has dropped which is a major constraint to ITF.
For instance, in 2019, the budget allocation for SIWES was N1.5 billion and what was paid into the coffer of ITF was N700 million, which represents a shortfall.
The Director-General of ITF, Sir Joseph Ari revealed that ITF would host the 14th edition of the Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) biennial conference this month to engage critical stakeholders on how to tackle the challenges.
“The greatest challenge of SIWES has been the payment of stipends to the participants. When it commenced, it started with only 11 universities in 1973. As we are talking now, we have over 262 institutions.
“It started with few students, but today we are talking about millions of students, while the number is growing by the year, the funding has continued to drop also by the year. For example, last year, the budget for SIWES was N1.5 billion and what was paid into the coffer of ITF was N700 million. The earlier people understand the situation, the better, that is why some students would have graduated before their money are paid. What we are doing is not just in Nigeria alone, it is found even in developed climes.
“In Germany, SIWES is practice but it is known as the apprenticeship programme and what is paid by the government, is paid by the individuals but in Nigeria, Federal Government does the funding in view of the difficulties and challenges parents encounter in paying for their wards and children.
“As parts of the effort to improve the scheme, the ITF has stepped up engagement with the supervisory agencies and other stakeholders to address some of the problems bedevilling the scheme. The SIWES conference and the Students Industrial Work Experienced Scheme stakeholders are organised with all the regulatory agencies, the Federal Ministry of Education, Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment; Labour and Productivity as well as members of the organised private sector and the employers of labour.
“Resolutions from this event would be implemented to resolve the numerous challenges that are encountered in the administration of the scheme. We want to bring everyone together, the universities that have SIWES coordinators and directors to talk about the challenges and the way forward, so that at the end of it, we would come up with a communique on how to address the SIWES programme without further challenge.
Ari said SIWES which is a brainchild of ITF was conceived to de-emphasise premium on the paper qualification which was then a prioritise in the country to the detriment of hand-on skills.
Ari said: “Two years after the establishment of ITF in 1973, the ITF came up with a proposal to the Federal Government to change the educational curriculum of the country because then there was no concrete programme to address the issue between theory and practice.
“We placed so much premium on paper qualification. We trained people without understanding their field, a lot of people with degrees but to lay hands on skills became difficult, thus the ITF came up with SIWES to tackle the disconnection between the issue of theory and practice.
“Before graduation, students ought to have the opportunity to go into the industries to learn more about their courses because they may not have seen the machines in the four corners of the universities but in the industry. They will meet and interact with experts and after graduation, they will be well prepared for the work experience.
“For the universities, the regulatory body for SIWES is the National Universities Commission (NUC), for the Polytechnics and Monotechnics, the regulatory agency is the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and for the colleges of education, the regulatory body is the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and the ITF works with them.”
Ari explained that ITF work with the regulatory bodies who are saddle with the responsibility of identifying the courses to be run in the scheme and the period the students would spend on the programme and the placement of list. He noted that the ITF also carries out verification in the workplace through the use of the logged book for students to ensure transparency.
“In the forthcoming conference, we will engage stakeholders on how to resolve the challenges. So we are hopeful that the stakeholders’ engagement will enable us to come up with something that will put to an end the challenges we are facing with SIWES.
It is a scheme that is needed if we are to standardised and have quality graduates in engineering and other allied disciplines.”
The DG also disclosed that arrangements have been concluded with the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) to commence direct admission of students into the Model Skills Training Centre (MSTC) from the 2020 academic session.
He said that the management of JAMB was fascinated by the depth and content of the curriculum and machinery at the MSTC in Abuja. Ari said that the centre was established to help promote technical and vocational education in Nigeria and to bridge the skills gap in the country. The director-general added that the ultimate objective of the centre was to empower Nigerians to handle critical services that were hitherto the exclusive preserve of expatriates.
He explained that the training at the MSTC was modular in nature and after each module, the students could work in any factory as they would have been efficiently trained to work in any factory setting. Ari explained that graduates of the MSTC will be issued the National Innovative Diploma Certificate and the National Vocational Certificate.
