The House of Representatives on Friday tasked the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and Rectors of Polytechnics on the need to ensure judicious utilisation of public funds approved for Polytechnics across the country.
Chairman, House Committee on Federal Polytechnics and Higher Technical Education, Hon. Kayode Laguda gave the charge in Abuja during the 2024 budget performance and 2025 budget defence presented by NBTE Executive Secretary, Professor Idris Bugaje.
He noted that there is a need for government agencies to judiciously utilise resources available to them before asking for more as their performance should determine why more resources should be allocated to them.
Laguda said: “Performance is very key. And that is what will help us move forward in 2025. It is an acceptable and known fact that the Polytechnics are poorly funded.
“We know, but we need to justify our need for more and show why we need more. To be honest with ourselves, have we been able to do that? That is what we should answer.
“And if we speak with each other truthfully, we know we are not doing good in that aspect. Not all of us, but most of us are not doing good in that aspect. The whole essence of this committee is to bring out the best in us. And to put corrective measures where it is needed”.
While acknowledging that NBTE is a very crucial regulatory Agency in the area of technical education, he underscored the need to ensure adequate funding for the agency to ensure that technical education institutions are positioned to provide Nigeria with the needed expertise and workforce to drive innovation and development.
Luguda who harped on the need for better synergies within the Polytechnics and various stakeholders, tasked all the Rectors to be more proactive and introduce modern courses, syllabus and relevant courses to their immediate environments.
Speaking earlier, NBTE Executive Secretary, Professor Idris Bugaje called for an increase of its budgetary allocation to recruit more personnel in order to supervise the activities of over 700 Polytechnics and other Institutions across the country.
According to him, operations of the agency are being hampered by inadequate manpower to carry out its mandate as such, there is need to have more staff to do the job.
He said: “For personnel, we are looking for an improvement because we have about 700 institutions to visit and our staff strength is at 330, which is very low.
“Similar Agencies like ours have more staff fewer institutions and more funds to carry out their duties, but our personnel cost is very low, so we want that one to be increased so that we can inject more hands to do that rotation.”
Speaking on the agency’s Internally Generated Revenue, he said there are charges being paid by Institutions that are not constant but based on some activities and is charged during accreditation visits and some other activities.
“It is only when we go for accreditation we charge a service charge. Before 75,000 we have increased to 150,000 per programme. And then we give 50 per cent to the Federal Government.
“For the whole year, we ended up with N25 million in IGR. Which is dismally low.
“We have about 200 programmes, which also need to be increased, introduce contemporary ones. it’s not every year we visit every Polytechnic on all these programs every outing.
“So, for that reason for this current year, our IGR is extremely low, just about 25 million or so. Our capital performance for 2024 is 50 percent. We are yet to get the remaining 50 per cent,” Bugaje noted.
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