INTERVIEW: Degrees will lose relevance in next 15 years, says NBTE boss
Since he was appointed the executive secretary of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) in April 2021, Idris Bugaje has been at the forefront of repositioning Nigeria’s technical and vocational education sector. Under his leadership, NBTE has introduced major reforms aimed at bridging the skills gap, enhancing polytechnic education, and ensuring that graduates are equipped with academic qualifications and practical expertise.
In this interview with TheCable’s SAMUEL AKPAN, Bugaje discusses the board’s push for a National Commission for Technical Education, efforts to address the lingering HND-degree dichotomy, and the broader strategy to make technical education a key driver of Nigeria’s industrial and economic growth.
TheCable: How has it been since your appointment in 2021?
Bugaje: It has been quite exciting. We met a lot of challenges on the ground. We have been able to overcome most of them. We have also tried to reposition the NBTE to deliver on skills. That is one of the major achievements. We have made skills training mandatory for all polytechnics so students can graduate with two certificates.
We have got the National Council on Skills to be up and doing. It’s chaired by the vice president. Since the new government came in, we have had about three meetings, trying to reposition the skills and agenda to create the national skills fund so training can be properly funded, and also trying to entrench the Nigeria skill qualification framework. These are some of the achievements. We are now using technology in line with modern trains.
TheCable: Last October, you said the board should be upgraded to a commission. When this happens, what will it achieve?
Bugaje: We had a public hearing at the national assembly for a bill for the National Polytechnic Commission. But when the new minister of education came, I mentioned it to him during my briefing, and he said: “Dead on arrival”. Everybody was upset but I was not. I continued with my presentation, but before I concluded, I said, “Minister, my earlier proposal has now been modified. We are going to have the National Commission for Technical Education”, and he replied, “That one can fly”. It was an interesting interaction.
The purpose of the commission, whether it is a polytechnic commission or the National Commission for Technical Education, is basically to be empowered to deliver better on the institutions we are overseeing. For example, this issue of the scheme of service, we have had a lot of issues with unions and several others. When you are a commission, you have more powers than a board in developing your own scheme of service that fits your sector. As a board, we don’t have that power.
Secondly, as commission, we should be on par with NUC and NCCE. We can also get whatever they get in terms of budgetary allocation and other things. But I can see the point of the minister of education. He wants us to have oversight of the entire technical education sector across the country. If you say polytechnic, then there are several institutions that are not polytechnics, and they are doing skills training, technical industrial vocational and entrepreneurship (TIVET). So, for that reason, he wants us to have an overall superintendence on the entire TIVET sector, out of which polytechnic is just one sub-sector. I agree with him totally. So, we have now written to the national assembly. We are now rebranding the bill to read: National Commission for Technical Education.
TheCable: There are more people seeking university admission than the polytechnic. What is responsible?
Bugaje: In the next 10 to 15 years, degrees will lose their relevance. Skills qualification is what will give you a job.
Bugaje: There are so many reasons for that. There is some unfortunate psychology, the Nigerian mentality that a degree is higher than a diploma or even higher national diploma. It’s a very unfortunate psychology, and we need to sensitise people to reverse that. Another reason for the low dismal admissions is that universities take about 70 percent of the total admissions. Polytechnics account for just about 18 to 20 percent. Colleges of education take about 10 to 12 percent of the total admissions in the country. Now, the other reason for the dismal statistics is the dichotomy in the public service between degrees and HND.
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At the moment, an HND in public service cannot go beyond grade level 14. A degree holder can become a director, but an HND is limited to grade level 14 for no real practical reason, because when it comes to delivery, the HND will even do better than the degree holder because he has hands-on skills. The industry also prefers HND to a degree holder. So, for that reason, we are now proposing to the government to let us scrap the HND. In all our polytechnics, after the national diploma, let them go and do a bachelor of technology honours. But this will be a degree different from a university degree.
In the universities, you give degrees based on character and learning. In the polytechnics, we shall give bachelor of technology degrees based on character, learning and skills. The three major components will be there. So, this is the best way to end the dichotomy, and by the time we do this, I’m very sure that we are going to grow the admissions into our polytechnics, and the dichotomy will be over. There will be a progression path for polytechnic graduates. Technical education will still end with ND — national diploma, technician qualification. But those who want to aspire higher can go for the bachelor of technology honours, and after that, they can even go for higher degrees.
So, this is the option we are given. Ghana has implemented that. South Africa has been implementing it dually. The polytechnic where I did my sabbatical about 21 years ago in South Africa, they were offering both HND and bachelor of technology concurrently. So, it’s the choice of the candidate. Industries globally prefer the HND, but more importantly, industries today also recognise more of the skills qualification. The skills that you acquired during your training. That is why we have introduced the mandatory skills qualification in every polytechnic. Every ND, every HND must acquire skills qualification in addition to the HND. But our prayer is that the Polytechnic Act be amended to allow polytechnics to offer a bachelor of technology honours. The College of Education Act has already been amended. Now they are doing NCE and B.Ed honours. So, we want the same thing. We shall be offering ND and B.Tech honours.
TheCable: Do you think the national assembly and the ministry will buy the idea, and has the process begun?
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Bugaje: For the commission, we have, but this one is in the pipeline. I have already written to the honourable minister of education on the amendment of the Polytechnic Act. We have a new minister of education who is very passionate about skills. He is trying to reposition the entire TIVET sector. Not only at the tertiary level but even at the sub-tertiary level. He is bringing NELFUND to support those who go for TIVET training, giving them stipends for certification of the skills training. So, we have an honourable minister who is very passionate about skills, and I am very sure he is going to support this change from a HND to be replaced with a bachelor of technology honours.
TheCable: What is responsible for the dichotomy between HND and degree in the civil service?
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Bugaje: The answer is simple. That is a sign of underdevelopment being exhibited in Nigeria. That dichotomy itself is a sign of underdevelopment. Countries that have developed don’t look at your papers. The degree will soon be obsolete and of no use. In the next 10 to 15 years, degrees will lose their relevance. Skills qualification is what will give you a job. Even if you get a job, you have to upskill from time to time, improve your skills, and get certifications on those skills. In that way, you can now move forward.
In Nigeria, it’s very unfortunate. I don’t think it’s even colonial psychology. It’s a psychology of underdevelopment that is haunting us. If you look at the system, the civil service top echelon is dominated by degree holders. Even if you go to the polytechnics now, the lecturers and the heads of departments, 90 percent are from universities. That’s what we are trying to change. In the polytechnics, we are saying, we should allow HND holders to be employed as assistant lecturers. If we want, we can allow the degree holder also to be given assistant lecturer status.
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The polytechnic has its system. Somebody who has done a university degree and has no understanding of the polytechnic system will graduate and become an assistant lecturer, while HND holders will be given the position of a technologist. So, the new scheme of service that we propagated last year, that provision is there. HND holders will be given employment as assistant lecturers, primarily in the polytechnics because it’s their system. They have gone through it. So, they can now go to do their masters, become senior lecturers, do PhD, become chief lecturers, and eventually become rectors.
We want HND holders to be heads of polytechnics, not university graduates. The civil service is dominated by university graduates, and they are deliberately trying to keep HND holders from progressing. There’s no justification for that dichotomy. And I hope this unwarranted dichotomy will come to an end very soon.
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TheCable: Still on the technical skill, we see many expatriates brought into the country to do the work that people from polytechnics should do. Do you have any reservations about this?
Bugaje: It is simply because Nigeria has not given attention to TIVET — technical education training segment of education. We have not given attention to TIVET for so long. Since independence, TIVET has not received any attention. I’ll give you the statistics. Today, we have 129 technical colleges in Nigeria — out of over 15,000 senior secondary schools. Only less than 1 percent are technical colleges. The polytechnics are supposed to take their input from the technical colleges. It is because there are not enough candidates, so they take from the conventional secondary schools. We are repositioning the training so that they will now graduate with skills qualification.
If you take some of the major projects that took place in the last 10 years in Nigeria — the AKK gas pipeline, the Dangote refinery, the Urea plant in Lekki, built by Dangote, even the railway extension from Abuja to Kaduna — they were all done with foreign skilled labour. The celebrated Dangote refinery in Lagos, but 11,000 skilled workers were brought from India because there were no skilled hands here. They will not look at your degree or diploma. They will look at your skills and qualifications. Can you do welding? Can you do pipe fitting? Can you do an integrity test when the welding is done? Can you do scaffolding? These are skills. And these are what the polytechnics are now being repositioned to deliver on. They will do the diploma, but they must also train a student on skills, a skill for which a student has a passion for. That’s what we’re asking them to do.
So, it’s the absence of this repositioning TIVET that caused all these problems. That’s why the new minister is now, you know, rebranding TIVET at the sub-tertiary level. The technical colleges are now being rebranded.
There are about 38 federal technical science and technical colleges. They have now been changed to purely federal technical colleges, instead of science and technical, because when the students go to those colleges, 80 percent will go for science. Only 20 percent will do the technical. So, he said, no way. Let’s just stop the science. Let’s move them to other colleges. Let’s concentrate on the technical. Then he’s bringing in NELFUND as I mentioned, to give them monthly stipends to pay for the tuition fees. The schools will directly collect the tuition fees so that they can buy consumables for the training.
The narrative is going to change very soon. I hope this change the minister is introducing shall be sustained for up to 10 years. The whole nation will now change, and we shall do the right thing. We shall stop importing skilled labour. Construction sites here in Abuja, a lot of the POPs, the finishers, the tilers are from Benin and Togo. Nigerian youths are there hanging around with no jobs.
In addition to this intervention, the minister is also going to fund skills training centres. Any recognised centre accredited by NBTE will now get this intervention from NELFUND. Six months training, let young people go and get training. If you have a degree or a diploma and you have no job, go to the skill training centres. They’ll train and certify you, and you can now start setting up on your own. There’s an arrangement with even the Bank of Industry so that they will be giving them loans after the training. Let them set up on their own. They don’t even need to look for jobs in other places. So, this is a major intervention, and we hope it will be sustained.
TheCable: Have you discovered any fake polytechnics?
Bugaje: There are quite a number of them. We have been working with ICPC to track them. About three — one in Enugu, Ogun, and Lagos. Already, we have stopped them from admission. We have also taken the matter to ICPC because we can’t prosecute. We’ve signed an MOU with them.
But now we have also introduced something else: digital accreditation. Before, it was physical, and the physical accreditation has a lot of unwholesome practices. Polytechnics will borrow equipment from other polytechnics. They will borrow lecturers from other institutions. Polytechnics will do so many things, cutting corners. That is bound to stop now. Everything is digital. We’re using AI. We will verify whatever information you give. You have to upload the drawings of your workshops and your classrooms so that we can now assess them online. You have to upload everything on our website — pictures of the head of department and all the lecturers and technologists, so that we can use AI to confirm if they have appeared on another website.
You also have to provide clips of your workshops and laboratories. Short clips, put them on YouTube, give us the link. We’ll now go and verify it. For every piece of equipment you have, you have to give us a GPRS number so we can track it wherever it is. So, we’re now using technology to drive our accreditation. Anybody who doesn’t want digital accreditation, the minister told them to outsource physical accreditation to consultants. So, from April, consultants will come in to do physical accreditation. But the digital one is cheaper and better. But many Nigerian institutions are saying, “We don’t have the internet, we don’t have ICT infrastructure and so on.” These are lame excuses. But we have given them that window. If you insist on a physical accreditation, then consultants will conduct it for you.
TheCable: What transformation have you introduced at the NBTE?
Bugaje: I have mentioned some of them. The introduction of this digital accreditation is one of them. The creation of zonal offices, which were not there before, so that we can go to the grassroots. Even these consultants will have to deal with our zonal offices because we don’t want people to be flying all over. Let every consultant be within that zone so that the cost will be minimised.
We have also been able to take Nigeria to a higher level in the global skills ecosystem. Nigeria, last year, was admitted into the World Skills International. This is a recognition of the efforts NBTE is doing to promote skills. Nigeria also hosts the African headquarters of the Sub-Saharan Africa Skills and Apprenticeship Network (SASNET). This is also a network that was promoted and developed with support from ILO and other organisations to promote skills and formalising the informal sector.
Nigeria’s economy is 75 percent informal. Across Africa, it’s about 80-85 percent informal. So, this informal sector that we have all over the country, we are now trying to formalise them: the Apo Mechanic Village, the Pantaker in Kaduna, the Ariaria Market Shoe Centre in Aba, the Computer Village in Ikeja. We are now linking all the informal sectors to nearby polytechnics so that they can now do some skills training together. They can now do recognition of prior learning and RPL on them, so that they can give them certifications. Then the informal training in these informal sectors can be properly formalised and certified.
In the next 5 to 10 years, we can now think of asking those who practice to get an operational license from the professional bodies, so that those who repair your vehicle will be properly licensed, like it’s happening all over the world. After this training, plumbers, even if they are informal, will be given certification through recognition of prior learning. They should be able to get a license to practice. It would reduce quakery. So, these are some of the issues on the ground and many others.
TheCable: You are a member of the board of TETfund. How has the fund impacted polytechnics in Nigeria?
Bugaje: In the last three years, TETfund has significantly improved its intervention on skills. We started this argument when I came onto the TETFund board of trustees in 2021. How do they help us reposition the informal sector? In 2022, they gave intervention for Pantaker in Kaduna through Kaduna Polytechnic and for the Computer Village in Lagos. In 2023, the Fund identified about six other polytechnics for special intervention on skills. In 2024, 14 polytechnics were identified, and I hope in 2025, all the remaining polytechnics will now get intervention on skills.
With the interventions, every polytechnic is now setting up skills development centres so that they can train their students on skills and give them certification and also deal with the informal sector outside the campus, see how they can integrate them and formalise their training, give them RPL and other instruments of training so that they can be certified. Our target is that in the next five years, all the informal people you see on the road will have proper certification. This certification is going to create opportunities for them.
When the AKK gas pipeline was starting, they were looking for 5,000 welders, scaffolders and integrity testers. We counted the numbers available only in hundreds. If the informal sector had been properly certified, some of the welders could have gone there and joined in that project, but they have no certification. That’s the challenge.
So, with this intervention from TETFund, a lot of the informal sector is being formalised. A lot of the polytechnics are establishing skill training centres. This way, I think skills are now becoming entrenched in our polytechnics.
TheCable: What has been the biggest challenge at the NBTE?
Bugaje: Well, the greatest challenges of the board are two or three. First, funding. Our funding has been dwindling. Last year, it was the lowest. This year, we’re happy the new minister has improved it. We have now gone back to what it was. We are still below N1 billion in capital. Last year, we got half a billion. This year, it’s about 900 million.
It’s out of this capital that we do occupational standards development, curriculum review, new curricular development, etc. So, the funding has been very low. We have about 896 institutions that we have oversight on. Universities have just 200 plus, yet universities get their budget from NUC in billions. Our capital budget has been dismally low, below N1 billion. But maybe because we are a board and not yet a commission. I hope by the time we are a commission, the funding will improve.
Besides funding, we have the challenge of personnel. That was why the minister said we should outsource. The number of personnel to supervise over 800 institutions is just about 100 academic programme officers.
The third one is that we are trying to bring industries on board. A lot of the industries are a little bit lukewarm, even the big ones. When I talked to the Manufacturing Association of Nigeria (MAN) to allow polytechnic lecturers to go to industries for hands-on training, they told me, “You amended your Polytechnic Act and expelled MAN from membership of the governing council of polytechnics.” It was the unions that did that in the 2019 amendment. So, in the new amendment, we are trying to bring them back to the governing council of polytechnics so that they can now help to train our lecturers.
Our lecturers from the universities don’t have hands-on skills. They are only teaching theories. So, we need to change that, and we hope industries will now collaborate. Industries need to collaborate with us because whatever we are producing is for them. Polytechnics are not meant to produce for the public service. Only 10 percent should go to public service, while 90 percent of our products should go to industries. So, industries need to support and work with us to improve on the kind of training we are delivering.
