By Gabriel Dike
Rector of Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH), Lagos, Mr. Obafemi Omokungbe, has made a passionate appeal to government to revive technical colleges to boost skills acquisition.
Omokungbe, an engineer, said, if the nation must promote skills acquisition among youths, technical colleges should be reintroduced and given top priority.
He words: “If we talk about skill acquisition, we must revive technical colleges. That is the missing link in our education system. We must have feeders that will be feeding the polytechnics.
“The world is turning to vocational training. We should bring back technical colleges that will serve as solution to youth unemployment.
“We must overhaul the 6:3:3:4 education system. Not all students are meant for university education. Some will go to technical colleges and feed the polytechnics.”
Omokungbe explained that, in 2016, the Federal Government proposed to convert YABATECH and Kaduna Polytechnic to universities, while in 2021, the National Assembly held a public hearing on the conversion and the college made a presentation at the sitting.
He revealed that it was their expectation that the college would be converted to University of Technology and also run entrepreneurship and skills programmes.
Giving a progress report on his administration, Omokungbe said his priorities were to reaccredit all programmes that expired, run stable academic calendar, improve facilities and new ones as well as improve the welfare of staff.
He added: “We carried out accreditation for some courses in December 2019. The few ones were due in 2020 but because of the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, the college couldn’t undertake the exercise.
“This year, we are accrediting courses due for 2020. We have some expired programmes in 2022. We expect to use grant from TETFund to provide facilities for the accreditation exercise.”
The rector revealed that in the last four years, his administration has introduced ten new courses, some accredited while others are awaiting accreditation.
“We are trying to get accreditation for ND course on Entrepreneurship. The World is talking about skills and entrepreneurship. In the last four years, we have established ten new programmes. Some are awaiting accreditation,” he stressed.
On Epe campus, Omokungbe, said there are three faculties; Schools of Technical Education (degree programmes in affiliation with UNN), School of Engineering and School of Technology.
Omokungbe disclosed that the college is working towards establishing School of Agriculture, noting, “the new school is to expand the horizon of our courses and the students. The management will work to affiliate the new school with relevant bodies.”
He commended the staff unions and the students for ensuring the college operator stable academic calendar in the past four years, stating, “it is my priority to have regular academic calendar. We don’t have backlog of students offered admission. We will start our new academic session this month.”