THE success story of most countries, particularly in Europe, America and Asia is largely tied to industrialization and technological breakthrough. Nigeria's founding father too were conscious of this and were determined to make Nigeria join this league, which explains why polytechnics, University of Science and Technology as well as Technical Colleges were established and funded. But despite the establishment of these institutions and the huge public funds expended on them, this dream has remained a mirage. Professor Igbekele Ajibefun, Rector, Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, Ondo in this interview with ABIODUN FANORO, explains why Nigeria is not yet there and what should be done. Excerpts:Part of the primary mandate of Polytechnics is to serve as agents of industrialization of the country. In your view how far has this mandate been achieved'Yes, to a certain level, the mandate has been achieved. But we are yet to get there fully. We still have to make efforts to get there. All over the world, development is a continuous process; we have to continue to aspire to improve our system. The polytechnics over the years have produced middle-level manpower to meet the industrialization needs of the country. However, I think we have to concentrate more on certain strategies that will ensure our development. For instance, the kind of technological requirement for the advanced countries is certainly different from what we need to industrialise and develop Nigeria, a developing country. We need simple technology that will meet the need of the society. We don't need the kind of sophisticated technology that the developed countries need.I think polytechnics should concentrate more on intermediate technology that are suitable and applicable to our level, and are affordable. Intermediate technology has to do with the design and production of simple equipment and tools that are better than manually operated tools. Even though they are mechanized, they are not in the class of sophisticated and high-level machineries used in the advanced world. For instance our farmers need simple technology like what they have in India. Intermediate technology that can do planting, process harvests from farm, the one that can help farmers in the storage and preservation of their products. We have to develop technologies that our society can easily adopt.Would you attribute our low level of industiralisation to our adoption technologies not suitable to our situation'There are many problems that account for our low level of industrialisation. One of them is inconsistency in policies. The educational policy of Nigeria has not been very consistent. At times when we have good policies, implementation is a problem. Students in polytechnics are to be trained to acquire skills that will help them to fit into the industries and also help them become employers of labour. But most polytechnic graduates these days have abandoned their acquired skills in search of White Collar job. If we continue this way, it may not augur well for the country in terms of technological development. While some may get jobs in industries, we expect that majority of them to start a cocktail of small-scale industries. The Ondo State Government in my mind is taking the lead in this area. My institution, Rufus Giwa Polytechnic, Owo, is now working in collaboration with the state's Ministry of Adult, Technical and Vocational Education and Ministry of Employment and Productivity, to design programmes for the training of neighbourhood artisans scattered in most towns and villages in the state.Are you recommending the Ondo State model to the Federal Government'Yes, the Ondo State model is a good example to look at. Also, I frown at the Federal Government's recently announced plan to turn some polytechnics to universities. What it simply means is that as a country, our polytechnic education policy has no focus and is being made to succumb to the whims and caprices of politics and selfish interest of political leaders instead of helping it to achieve the original goal it was designed for. Polytechnics and universities all over the world are established for different purposes. Students of polytechnics should be trained in skills that would help the cocktail industry while the universities can concentrate on producing graduates that would be employed at higher level, many be for designing projects and programmes. But the implementation would be by graduates of polytechnics who have the practical skills.Government has no business upgrading polytechnics to universities. I have been to different parts of the world, their universities and their polytechnics, have different mandates. For instance, in Germany, graduates of polytechnic are given funds by government to set up their own small-scale industries. It is not possible to give employment to all graduates of universities and polytechnics.If this happens in Germany, to where many of you polytechnic administrators travel regularly, why couldn't thje Body of Rectors suggest same to our government'Already, Conference of Nigerian Rectors of Polytechnics have started to discuss this particular issue. However before we make final recommendation to government, we have to fully discuss it, criticize it on our own, so as to be able to come up with a final resolution or recommendation which government cannot fault.There are reports of dearth of artisans as most of them have taken to Okada (commercial motorcycle) business. How can government halt this'What we should do is to change our orientation. Some applicants, would sit for examination into the university more than 20 times, when admission opportunities abound in the polytechnics. We should change the orientation of both parents and applicants to know that polytechnics are good enough to equip them and give them opportunities to make it in life. But for some candidates to feel that once they could not enter the university, there is nowhere they could go, is a national problem that the leadership must rise up to solve.What is responsible for most polytechnic graduates' inability to put into practice their acquired skills'That is part of the problem in our society. The rot in the society is so much that some students only passed through the school, they merely went there to get the certificate, without acquiring the skills. The society should change its orientation to focus more on skill acquisition, not theory. Rufus Giwa Polytechnic Owo strongly emphasizes this. To strengthen this skill acquisition policy, I recently went to Germany where I succeeded in fostering links with German Institutions of Learning, Research and Technological skill acquisition for the purpose of collaborating in the areas of skill acquisition and knowledge transfer.Is this not attitude not attributable to non-emphasis on practicals when students are in schools'Your view is correct. Emphasis has not been on practical in many institutions. But this is not the case at Rufus Giwa Polytechnic. Many institution have a wrong emphasis on theory, which unfortunately would not help graduates, especially polytechnic graduates, whose main mandate is skill-acquisition. A graduate of, say, Mechanical Engineering, would not be of any use to himself and to the society if he's not trained in practical skills. What we do at our polytechnic is to ensure that students are properly trained the way they should.How is the impact of your institution felt at the community level, especially among those that could not come for formal skill-acquisition at the school'Institutions, especially polytechnics and universities, are established to make impacts not only in the lives of students, but also on the immediate society. Our institution is making efforts in this direction. In fact we have sent a proposal to the state government that would enable us train artisan across the state's 18 local government areas. The government has also approved this document. With this, we would work in collaboration with local councils whose duty is to identify and organize people in their areas to whom we would give skill acquisition. There are some whom we would help improve or update their skills. The objective of the programme is to ensure that community-based or those they called road artisans acquire modern skills which the modern times need. Under the programme, our polytechnic will provide the data base of all artisans in the state. To do this, a centre for Intermediate Technology Development and Transfer has been established in the polytechnic. It has the mandate to carry out the programme soon. In the next one week, staff of Rufus Giwa Polytechnic would go to all the council to collect data on artisans in every country areas.How is your institution keying into the state's farm settlement scheme'Plan is at a higher level for our staff to visit these farm settlements to see how we can collaborate with these farm settlements. We also want to attach some of our students in these farm settlements for their practical. What is gladdening my mind right now is the step taken by the state government in the area of agriculture. In particular the farm settlement scheme we have been discussing, if well supervised, I can tell you that that remains the most viable step to revive agriculture in the state and to restore agriculture to its rightful place. The scheme would help our youths to imbibe the value of farming and take pride in modern-day farming.
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