A nongovernmental body, Our Home Our Heritage Support Initiative OHOHSI, a general advocacy for Yoruba Land and the Yorubas to liberate themselves economically and culturally through orientation, encouragement and support for our youths has raised alarm on the terrible condition of technical colleges across southwest Nigeria, calling on government to declare a state of emergency on the state of facilities at the nation’s technical colleges.
OHONSI through its Chairman, Ademola Akintola, Executive Secretary, Kayode Atolani and a board member, Pastor Olusegun Oginni on an advocacy mission to technical schools, stated that government at all levels need to work towards providing efficient facilities at the colleges in the interest of national development.
He also advised the government to back up contracts with the provision of funds to effective project implementation, demanding for a total overhaul of technical education in the country.
“We have visited some Technical Colleges to check for any available inventions for exhibition but unfortunately, we met the colleges empty; technical education deals with the training of technical personnel for the purposes of initiating, facilitating and implementing the technological development of a nation and also to create the basic awareness of technological literacy to our youths. But the training of technical personnel has witnessed formidable challenges in Nigeria.
“Technical education has a lot of issues ranging from poor funding to inadequate facilities both quantitatively and qualitatively, non-availability of adequate human capacity, brain drain and poor staff training and retention profiles. Also, we have issues of weak university/industry partnership, defective curricula, traditional approach to teaching, poorly equipped laboratories, poorly monitoring standards for the training of prospective technologists and an inadequate ICT environment.
“It is time for government to critically examine why Nigeria has not attained the desired standard of technological literacy and seek ways of improving the teaching and learning of technical education programme with enhanced enthusiasm and vibrancy,” they said.
The body said it has been doing all it could to ensure that technical colleges get the needed attention from every stakeholder as it is a core agent in ensuring reduction in unemployment and driving the economy of the nation.
OHONSI called on state governments to support nongovernmental bodies to ensure the dream of a virile technical education is achieved.
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