Kaduna Polytechnic to run courses in Railway Engineering

Kaduna Polytechnic is making arrangements to run courses in Railway Engineering to produce middle-level manpower for the growing rail industry in the country.

The polytechnic’s Head of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) Unit, Dr Muktar Habib made the disclosure on Thursday when he received officials of the Nigeria Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission, who were on a working visit to the institution.

He said the institution had sponsored 10 academic staff for various courses in railway engineering in India as part of the plan to open the railway engineering department in the Polytechnic.

“Kaduna polytechnic has just designed a curriculum for railway engineering.

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“We are now working strongly to ensure that we have a department that will provide the lower and middle-class labour for the railway which will greatly facilitate railway engineering education in the country,” Habib said.

The official also announced that the polytechnic has a lot of properties that are highly underutilised and plans to enter into an agreement with private investors to rehabilitate and run such properties.

According to him, the measure was necessary as the institution lacked funds to utilise the properties and build new departments.

“So we feel we can turn around using our properties to make some money to build more academic units,” he said.

While speaking on the renovation and building of new hostels, Habib said the institution was trying to renovate the hostels through PPP arrangement,

“The private partners will renovate the hostels and they will be the ones charging the students and making the environment very conducive for learning.”

According to him, the agreement would last for 15 to 18 years after which the property would come back to the institution.

Earlier, Alhaji Mohammed Bamalli, a Director with the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), commended the zeal and commitment of the polytechnic on innovations and execution of various projects within the institution.

“What the polytechnic is doing is very commendable because they are thinking outside the box, they are not relying on public funds but looking beyond that,” he said.

Bamalli said that their visit was to monitor projects and scrutinise agreements the institution had in the area of infrastructure development to ensure that it was in line with relevant laws.

It was also to ensure efficient execution of any concession agreement entered into by the polytechnic, as well as understand the bottlenecks encountered and challenges currently faced hindering the PPP projects, he added.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that among PPP projects visited by officials of the ICRC included hostels, fertilizer plant and the properties set for a swap with investors.