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From Priscilla Ediare, Ado-Ekiti
A Professor of Civil Engineering, Dr. Gbenga Aribisala, has advised the National Universities Commission (NUC) to ensure proper regulation of the operations of special universities and polytechnics, following Nigeria’s continuous fallback in offering entrepreneurial and vocational skills to its graduates.
Aribisala, who gave the advise during the 2nd Engr. Ayodele Afolabi Esan Annual Public Lecture organised by the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE) and held at the Afe Babalola University, Ado Ekiti(ABUAD), on Thursday, said those special institutions were created to provide special skills and equip graduates with knowledge to be job and wealth creators, expressed regrets that most of them now run courses outside their scopes and getting “polluted”.
In his lecture titled: ‘Economic Development Through Entrepreneurship and Skills Acquisition’ , the academic posited that the two major problems of insecurity and unemployment can only be solved with robust entrepreneurial and skills acquisition, which special institutions can guarantee.
The scholar also hinted that part of why Nigeria remained economically retarded in terms of development of Small and Medium Scale businesses has been that only 60 million out of 200m million Nigerian population have access to electricity.
The Professor of Civil Engineering, said: “Specialised universities of Agriculture and Technology as well as Polytechnics must be regulated properly by NUC. They are already being polluted by being allowed to run courses in social sciences and others”.
On how to resolve the puzzling problems, Aribisala urged the NUC to look into conversion courses being run by institutions, while researches in schools should be geared towards solving local problems.
“The government must provide bailouts for drowning SMEs. Nigeria should consider exporting skills to other nations to be able to garner more experiences and skills for local development”.
The academic stated that Nigerian Engineers can’t be productive as long as there is a disconnect between the education being offered and the environment.
“China unemployment rate is just 2%, India with over a billion population has unemployment rate of 7%. But that of Nigeria is between 33 and 35%. We are just consumers without productivity. But productivity and wealth creation can only occur when we have infrastructures, it is the bedrock of the economy and the driving force.”
Speaking about the significance of electricity to the growth of SMEs, Aribisala added: “In energy production, we are the third country without electricity in the world. Only 3% of rural communities and 30% of the nation have access to electricity. You can see how this has affected inflation and unemployment”.
The Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, represented by the supervising Commissioner for Public Utilities, Prof Bolaji Aluko, said his government has begun an Independent Power Plant, in partnership with some firms to put off a section of Ado Ekiti off the national grid.
“The national grid was not well supplied with adequate current and voltage to power electricity. Ekiti receives 6mgw from the national grid. How do we have regular electricity with this? We are building an IPP that will help in solving our perennial power problem”, he said.
The ABUAD’s founder and Chief host, Chief Afe Babalola(SAN), said this country is already in a mess in the areas of unemployment and insecurity, urging the engineers to up their games and rescue the nation from total collapse.
