Federal Polytechnic, Ayede, Oyo State is one of the six established by the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari in 2021. Its pioneer Rector, Dr. Taofeek Adekunle Abdul-Hameed, spoke with journalists on how far his administration has brought the young institution. SAM NWAOKO brings excerpts.
What is it like getting new students? How about enrolment? Are you encouraged, and how about your eligibility to Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund)?
May I commend the Federal Government ably led by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu; the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, the National Board for Technical Education (NABTEB) and the headship of TETFund. TETFund has helped our institution tremendously. At our temporary and permanent sites, we have lots of projects executed by TETFund. Our auditorium at the temporary site and numerous other projects at our permanent site were funded by TETFund. 100 percent of the take-off grant we received was used to construct buildings at our permanent site. We are grateful to the president, the minister of education, TETFund and NABTEB for their support in all ramifications.
In terms of enrolment, of the six polytechnics that were established at the same time, we are the one with the highest number of students. We have a total of about 1,200 students as we speak and that is why TETFund will always yield to our request in many cases. Apart from building construction, through TETFund we have students who have been sponsored for PhD and MSc programmes, and even Institutional-Based Research (IBR). So, we have enjoyed enormous support from TETFund. Recently, all heads of tertiary educational institutions were in Abuja and we learnt there what TETFund is planning to do for us this 2025. Their intervention will further promote the progress of this institution. So, we are not just eligible to access TETFund support, we have been enjoying it and we are still in line to enjoy more of it. We access TETFund for infrastructural development and training support, and we are grateful for this.
Your enthusiasm seems to negate the heightened struggle between Bachelor’s degree and ND/HND in the country. Meanwhile, the bill to abolish the dichotomy has scaled second reading in the House of Representatives. Why do you support parity in the products of the two types of tertiary educational institutions?
I support parity because skills and vocations are the in-thing now all over the world. In advanced countries, skills and vocations are encouraged. If you are talking about China today, it is because they give a premium to entrepreneurship development through skill acquisition and vocational development. I attended over three universities to get my degrees, and I have been in the polytechnic sector for over 30 years so I can make comparisons. If you look at it, it is because we lay so much emphasis on paper qualifications that is why we are not progressing the way we should as a country. If and only if the government can encourage skills and vocations, we will move faster. Our slogan at NBTE is “Skills rather than degrees” because acquiring skills is the in thing. No nation can develop without promoting skills acquisition.
In the advanced climes, what you see is that when you graduate from polytechnics, you get B.Tech not HND. Even the British that we copied have phased out this HND of a thing. What you see in Britain now is B.Tech, BSc and what have you. So, why is Nigeria the exception? Because of paper qualifications, we want to pride ourselves as being higher than the others… because I am a degree holder, I am better than the HND holder whereas it is not so. It depends on what you are able to contribute to the larger society. It is not just about paper qualification or theories alone. So I want to appreciate the National Assembly for giving us the opportunity and I want to believe that the bill will eventually be passed and Mr. President will give his assent finally. In fact, we thought that before the expiry of the life of the last administration it would have been signed, that once you are a HND holder and a BSc holder, the parity should be there. It is high time we forget about paper qualifications, let’s focus on what we can contribute to the society, the positive impacts we can make on the society.
Parity is also paper qualification and is still nebulous. How do you think it will make a tangible difference in society if it is eventually achieved?
When parity is finally achieved and the polytechnics now focus on what they are established to do, sincerely yours, it will impact positively on the society. Back in the days, I knew that if you were an undergraduate of The Polytechnic Ibadan or Yaba College of Technology, when it came to practicals or hands-on skills, they were far better than university undergraduates. But when discrimination became pronounced, the students just went to earn the certificates and just move on to other things; whereas the purposes for establishing the polytechnics were there. Conventional universities are more for theoretical things while the polytechnics are to train manpower that would move the economy of the country forward. It was said to be middle-level manpower, but the polytechnics now train higher level manpower too, who impact the society positively.
It must have been an eventful journey as the first Rector of the Federal Polytechnic Ayede. How has it been?
The journey has been eventful indeed. It was just like taking somebody to the forest and telling the person to start a town there. It has been rough and challenging but through the dedication of the management staff and the members of the Council, we have been able to overcome some of those challenges. As a new institution, for one year there was no structure on ground – there were no offices, no salary was being paid and from March to December 2021, we were just running helter-skelter. But by 2022, we were able to record some breakthroughs. We were able to secure the site of our temporary campus, which happened to be a former national youth development centre, through one of our major stakeholders. By dint of hardwork, we were able to get the administration building through the Federal Ministry of Works. One of our stakeholders helped with that. If I should be mentioning names, the list would be endless but I would like to thank all of them as individuals and collectively. Through the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation, the Federal Character Commission (FCC); Budget Office, the Office of the Accountant-General we were able to recruit the first set of staff members – about 150 of them, in 2022. After that, we invited the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) which is our supervisory and monitoring agency and we were bold enough to say we wanted to commence about 12 programmes at the same time, despite all the challenges. But the NBTE, after considering everything, including the challenges, gave us four to start with. They approved Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Statistics and Science Laboratory Technology. This encouraged us the more because our peers – the other five – were given only two courses to commence. One was even given only one course to commence with.
Eventually, we commenced academic activities in July 2022. From there, we started making progress and we have been telling our staff and other stakeholders that Federal Polytechnic Ayede is not an institution where you just acquire a certificate. We know that there are no jobs out there, so we don’t want our students, after graduation, to be seeking employment. So, we give a premium to entrepreneurship development and we are making tremendous progress in that regard to the extent that one of our students, even before graduation, was offered employment because of what he learnt here.
The challenges are quite enormous indeed, but, above all, we have fared well. Like I always tell my staff, the good can never be better than the best. We are aspiring to be the best and if we are able to sustain this tempo, in the next few years we will be able to compete favourably with first and second-generation polytechnics.
How does this disposition aid research and capacity building among the staff of the polytechnic?
Research and capacity building are very important to us and we are already encouraging that at the Federal Polytechnic Ayede. We are just three years old – when we count from when we actually took off in 2022 – and we already have 32 beneficiaries who are into various fields of research. Even some institutions which are far older than Ayede do not have this number. That shows that we are encouraging our staff to embark on research, research that would lead to the development of the society. When it comes to hands-on skills, we are ready. At Federal Polytechnic, Ayede, our intention is to give any graduate coming out of this institution two certificates: one for the course he or she was admitted for and the second one is for entrepreneurship development. And we currently have 21 who are beneficiaries of TETFund sponsorship for international training and conferences; and we also have 90 on local conferences. The management encourages the staff on conferences to cross-fertilise ideas for development and growth.
There were media reports of a building collapse at your permanent site. The impression is that it was too early for a thing like that in such a young institution…
Contrary to such media reports, no building collapsed either at our temporary or permanent sites. The report is not true whatsoever. However, a building under construction at the permanent site had its cantilever come off, a building still under construction that has not even been roofed, let alone completed and handed over. It was a normal construction site thing and we were surprised at such a report. It is not as if it was a completed building that had been handed over, but some people just thrive in mischief. Integrity tests have been conducted on all the buildings and they are certified by all the relevant regulatory agencies.
We also read reports that some stakeholders were sidelined in the scheme of things in the polytechnic and we wondered who those stakeholders were. From 2022 up to 2025, the reports at my office show that things are going on well. However, for political reasons and corruption, some people decided to twist tissues and we wonder what kind of ‘stakeholders’ those kinds of people are. All the supervisory agencies, including the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federal and TETFund all come with their engineers. The Federal Ministry of Education also comes and when these agencies give us a clean bill of health, I wonder who these ‘stakeholders’ are. However, we are in a society in which mischief is the order of the day because of corruption. When you refuse to fall for corruption, they will want to tarnish your image.
In what areas do you need immediate and long-term interventions?
The major one for now is the road network to our permanent site. It is the best thing that anybody can do to assist the institution and our administration for now. Of what benefit would about a dozen structures there be without putting them to use? If we can get somebody to assist us to link our permanent site to Ogbomoso, Odo Oba and to Ajaawa, that would be so fantastic. Our temporary site will soon get to a point where it will no longer contain us, and we need more classrooms and offices. We thank our royal fathers and the Police for what they have done in terms of security at our permanent site. If we are to move to the permanent site tomorrow, all is set. In terms of accommodation for students, the FG is encouraging private-public partnership (PPP) and we are currently considering some proposals before us.
What is your relationship with the host community?
Our relationship with the community is quite cordial. Yes, you cannot satisfy everybody but we are in a very good standing with the community. For instance, in the first and second employment exercises that we did, we were given 150 to employ and 32 percent of those employed are from Oyo State. 21 percent from Osun State. The House Committee on Federal Character mandated us to fulfill the federal character principle in the next employment as it must reflect the federal character principle. So we are looking at the North West, North East, South-South, the South-East and all of that. We are yet to move to our permanent site at Ayede but at our temporary site, we have a very good rapport with the Iresa Pupa community. I commend our father, the Soun of Ogbomosoland, Oba Ghandi Afolabi Olaoye, for his encouragement and support. He has charged us to keep on moving ahead of the others. The Aresa of Iresa Pupa has been so kind and supportive, likewise the Alajaawa of Ajaawa – because Ayede has no king yet. But because some people could not gain one advantage or the other, they still want to spread mischief and misinformation.
What is your projection with regards to movement to your permanent site, have you fixed a time for a possible relocation to the place?
We thought we could move there in December 2024, but unfortunately, the road network is the issue. We have been trying seriously to ensure that the Federal Government comes to our aid. We have made contacts with the Federal Ministry of Works and we have reached out to the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) and the Oyo State government. We have made contacts even with the chairman of Ogo-Oluwa Local Government and recently, we were there together with the Local Government chairman to inspect the road. So, by God’s grace we are targeting September this year, all things being equal.
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