THE Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Polytechnic (SSANIP) has urged the Federal Government to put an end to the ongoing discrimination against graduates of Polytechnics during recruitment by Federal Agencies.
President of SSANIP, Mr Sunday Sabo, made the revelation on Tuesday in Abuja at the 5th National Delegates Conference 2019, where new executive officers of the association would be elected.
Sabo also called on the Federal Government to implement the recommendations of the Needs Assessment Committee to Polytechnics which exercise was conducted in 2013 and dumped in the shelf.
He lamented that recruitment in public service in Nigeria is based on certificate and not the skill and capacity to do the job, stressing that the dichotomy between Bachelor’s of Science degree and Higher National Diploma was unnecessary.
He said: “When it comes to employment, priority attention is given to people with university degrees over those with Higher National Diplomas (HND).
“You remember some few years back when Nigeria Immigration Service advertised for recruitment, for higher officers cadre, they did not even recognise HND. Even in the scheme of service, it is the same discrimination. These are some of the issues we have been battling with the government,” he said.
On the implementation of Needs Assessment report, Sabo expressed optimism that if the issues contained in the document were addressed, Nigeria would have shifted in technological advancement, saying what the institutions were doing now was to manage to keep the system running.
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He emphasized that polytechnic education in the country is “grossly underfunded”.
“One of the countries recently converted about 600 of its universities to polytechnics, to tell you the importance of polytechnic eduction. Unfortunately, no priority attention is given to technical eduction in Nigeria.
“We have been battling with the Federal Government on the need to properly fund polytechnic education,” he said.
He condemned some state governments who have refused to implement the 65 years retirement age for their the Polytechnic workers, adding that the conference would deliberate and take a position on the issue.
He explained that the Federal Polytechnics do not have that problem of non-implementation because the Polytechnics Acts has captured that and it is being implemented.
“For State Polytechnics, we are still battling about that with some of the Governors. We are going to strategise on how to manage the situation and get the Governors from the respective states to domestic the Act, implement that for their Polytechnic workers,” he said.
He noted that some of the challenges confronting polytechnic education in Nigeria are dilapidated infrastructure, obsolete equipment, saying modern equipment is needed for effective teaching and learning.
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