Stakeholders advocate development of engineering laboratories for tertiary institutions

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Stakeholders in the education sector have called for the development of engineering laboratories for tertiary institutions in the country.

They made the call at a two-day workshop on interventions for the “development of engineering laboratories for tertiary institutions”, organised by LiviaSoft, Anritsu and Tektronix in Abuja.

According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the call became imperative as inadequate facilities were hampering the development of the sector.

He said this informed the workshop, organised to update the skills of laboratory and teaching staff with modern state-of-the-art equipment having noticed a deficiency as a result of the lack of infrastructural facilities in higher institutions.

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“We identified the setbacks those in the universities have as they graduate. Our intention here is a sensitization campaign where we brought in universities from six political zones from which we had the HOD’s and a technologist. We hope that their skills would be updated even as we advocate for better interventions for more equipped laboratories,” he stated.

Dr Shaibu Usman a DON at the Ahmadu Bello University noted that although the equipment in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions were quite outdated, there was a need to update the curriculum used.

“For us in engineering where things keep changing, you find out that the needed equipment is not there in the laboratory. So that is why it is very difficult to even when you update the curriculum and the equipment are not there to provide the necessary practical’s, you will not succeed.

“Another issue is the insufficiency of the equipment. Those days you have in the practical laboratory, one is to one or one is to two but now you have the ratio of one to twenty or thirty. So you find out that the aim of the practical is defeated,” he added.

Tribune Online