The Rector of Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, Ogun State, Dr Olusegun Aluko, has called on the Federal Government to make polytechnics degree awarding institutions, as part of moves to improve on the technological education in Nigeria.
Aluko submitted that there is need to rejig the foundation of technological education in Nigeria, saying any country that cannot develop its technology has huge problems to contend with.
He spoke on Monday at the institution in Ilaro during a press briefing held as part of the activities making the 20th convocation ceremonies of the polytechnic.
Aluko, an architect, said rather than converting polytechnics into universities they should be allowed to award Bachelor, Master and Doctoral degrees in technology.
According to him, the level of Ph.D holders in the polytechnic is comparable to most of the University as many polytechnics have 30-40 percent of their staff strength as Ph.D holders.
“Where do I stand? Polytechnics should be given the opportunity to award degrees not converting them into universities. They should be able to award BTech, MTech and Ph.D.”
“This is because, you will not lose the practical content of their courses… once you convert them (polytechnics) into the University, they drop the curriculum of the polytechnic and pick up the curriculum of the University which are very different from each other. That’s the major problem we are having now,” he said.
He disclosed that the polytechnic has produced 542 distinction out of 10,358 graduands in the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 combined convocation ceremonies.
Aluko said the polytechnic could not hold 2021/2020 convocation ceremony last year due to the COVID-19 which facilitated the policy of social distancing that led to the suspension of the ceremony.
He however said the institution decided to combine the two ceremonies which would hold Wednesday, March 30.
He said the ceremonies would be the last official event his administration would supervise since almost eight years when he assumed the office as Rector of the institution .
Giving the breakdown of the grades of the graduands , Aluko said the polytechnic graduands would confer Higher National Diploma and Ordinary National Diploma on 10,358 which consist of 5,124 and 5,234 for the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 academic sessions respectively .
He said “for 2019/2020 session the polytechnic produced 94 distinction out of 1,932 HND graduates and 156 distinction graduates were produced out of 3,192 graduands” .
For 2020/2021 academic session , Aluko said “140 distinction out of 1,754 HND graduates while 152 distinction graduates were produced out of 3,480 graduands for OND programme.”
Aluko said his very seven years tenure has produced 43 PhD holders while additional 34 programmes have been accredited ,making the total of 74 programmes .
The Rector added that school had invented two ventilation and was on the verge of innovating cement technology that would gulp N220 million .
Justifying the number of the graduates with distinction , Aluko said “we don’t award distinction anyhow. If we have 93 per cent out of 5,000, I don’t think that is a giveaway, because, if we have 1,932 HND graduands out of 5,000, only 94 distinction have distinction . is not even up to 10 per cent,around five per cent , I don’t think that’s a cheap grade .”
