Bugaje said this when fielding questions from the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on issues around its newly launched top-up programme for HND holders to acquire a Bachelor of Science, BSc, in their choice course.

He said that the board had no power to award degrees to students but able to help HND holders by facilitating the programmes with foreign universities while introducing credit mapping to aid learning.

“We have a software that does credit mapping, we have already fed our HND graduates with that software so it will now pick the curriculum of the foreign university compare them together to bring out what is the difference between the two.

“We are now in discussion with a number of these foreign universities from Malaysia, Russia, India but with time we hope we can populate about 15-20 universities. Though it’s a gradual process, this will offer more opportunities for students.

“So far, we have gotten applicants for over 30,000. About two weeks ago, it was 15,000 and within this two weeks, it has doubled and I am very confident that in the next two weeks we may hit about 50,000 applicants.

“These are Nigerian HND holders yearning to have this dichotomy brought to an end by acquiring BSc and unfortunately there are PhD holders who have HND who are also coming back to do BSc.

“This is like a contradiction after a doctorate coming back to BSc and this is what we are trying to avoid by asking the fresh HND holders to go straight to do the top-up programme and get the BSc and be at par with anybody else in the progression,” he said.

He, therefore, said that HND holders would only be made to pay 10 per cent of the entire tuition fees to run the one-year top-up programme.

The executive secretary also allayed the fears of the university system as against losing their students saying the programme would only bring competition.

When asked about the preference of foreign universities over local universities, Bugaje said the local universities were full of prejudice against HND.

He, however, blamed this on the National Universities Commission, NUC, who had refused to key into the programme in spite of written letters to inform them about the programme.

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“The best dialogue is with the NUC and the ministry of education. We have written letters and sent reminders and even crafted a curriculum and we sent it to the ministry but it is like it has not seen the light of the day.

“We realised they are looking down on the academic board of polytechnics, they said the academic board of polytechnics are not equivalent to universities senate.

“We have been in this since two years I came in as executive secretary of NBTE. I have given the new minister brief on this and I am very confident he is going to endorse what we are doing,” he said.

He called on the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, to take a very strong position against the dichotomy while also hoping that the polytechnic Act would be revisited in no time to put an end to the dichotomy challenge.

He said the Act if reviewed would allow polytechnics to run bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees in technology for their products.

“The polytechnic system is a system parallel to the university, we are not feeders. The Colleges of Education (COE) feed the university system.

“This is because anytime the national policy on education changes and they make BSc education the minimum qualification for teaching in basic schools, the role of the NCE will be over; even the commission overseeing the programme will cease to exist.

“The COE all feed into the NUC programmes to produce graduates. In the polytechnics, we are a complimentary system, we produce technology and technicians for industries basically.

“But there are components of our systems also that pursue academic career and those ambition should not be stopped. So, I hope the roadmap committee the minister has set up will come up with a final solution for this dichotomy against HND,” he added.

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They stated this in Ibadan in separate reactions as the Senate on Wednesday passed the bill scrapping HND and BSC dichotomy.

Alhaji Soladoye Adewole, Public Relations Officer, The Polytechnic Ibadan, said ab initio, the dichotomy should not have been but the government in its wisdom brought it in.

He said the educational system in use was borrowed from England but England had changed its educational system when discrimination set in between its Polytechnic and University graduates.

Adewole also noted that China did the same thing when discrimination set in as a fresh university degree holder became the boss of a polytechnic graduate working for about 20 years in the nearest future.

“I commend those behind this move but I also want to advise that polytechnic graduates should not rest on their oars.

“They should strive to get the necessary additional certificates to make themselves relevant in whatever field they are.

“Add value to yourself and upgrade yourself on your job as development is a continuum.

“The whole thing now lies with the president to assent to the bill because then, nobody will be able to contravene the law and go free,” Adewole said.

Another respondent, Dr Oludayo Tade, a Sociologist at the University of Ibadan, said the bill would not necessarily solve the challenges of underdevelopment and lack of skill gap in the workplace in Nigeria.

He noted that converting polytechnic into university would not solve the problem facing the country but that each tertiary institution must deliver on its mandate for its establishment.

Tade noted that issues such as functionality and capabilities of the various institutions and their faculties needed to be brought to bear in improving the quality of education and the removal of dichotomy.

“If the government can regulate the dichotomy in its establishments first, then every other sector of the economy can then do the same.

“There are various government agencies and parastatals with different degrees of emoluments paid to workers and so harmonisation of salary scales is needed if dichotomy is to be addressed.

“There are other bills such as the one which stated the percentage of the physically challenged people that should be employed but is it being followed?

“So, the issue is not passage of the bill but critically looking at how to bridge the skill gaps and provide equality for workers to earn their pay.

“Most employers now pay you for what you can do. That is the value you brought to bear in the workplace and not your certificate,” Tade said.

Mr Tunji Adepeju, an employer of labour, said the dichotomy had been an issue for a long time now as a Bachelor’s degree holder had an edge over a HND holder.

“The Higher National Diploma (HND) is for someone who goes to the polytechnic, College of Technology or any other specialised division and is trained to be practical.

“Whereas, the BSc holders are more academic or theoretical.

“In the UK, I am aware that the people with probably what I can call the HND are rated and enumerated better or higher there  because what we need now is technological development and not talking about theory.”

According to him, this is not the first time the government has been issuing circulars upon circulars on it but it was not implemented.

“Now that it is coming by the way of the law, it will encourage more people to attend polytechnic and colleges of technology because many students who filled their JAMB forms picked universities because of the dichotomy.

“For two to three years, some students roam the streets because of their desire to go to the universities and not polytechnic.

“That will change if they now know that either way, they can get to the highest level in the public service,” Adepeju said.

Source: NAN

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