A right activist and former President, Nigeria Association of Polytechnic Graduates, Comrade Razaq Olokoba has frowned at the discrimination against the graduates of the Polytechnic by placing University graduates above them in hierarchy in Nigeria.
In a chat with the media in Lagos the concerned human rights crusader regretted that the discriminatory policy has contributed largely to the retardation of development in the country.
According to him, Polytechnic education is designed to train technical and mechanical experts that would be skillful enough to handle some vital aspects of infrastructural sectors with a view to building a standard nation that could compete with her peers across the globe in the field of technology.
Olokoba who reasoned that a developing nation like Nigeria needs more of polytechnic products for rapid growth and development regretted a situation where polytechnic graduates would abandon office to seek university degrees to be relevant in the system, saying, “apart from money wasting, the development is counter-productive and antithetical to development.”
To address the issue properly, the activist suggested that, “henceforth, the government should stop making university graduates Heads of Polytechnics as Rectors,” suspecting that, “there seems to be a deliberate maneuver to subject the products to schemes that would make them perpetually inferior to their university counterparts.”
The aggrieved social commentator further suggested that, “our lawmakers should be mandated to criminalize any tendency that tends to put the polytechnic graduates below university degree holders as inferior partners,” saying, “those caught indulging in such anti-progress policy should be made to face the music.”
Polytechnic, according to him, is like a human laboratory where you build skills and bring them up to operate at an industrial level, advocating for a situation whereby polytechnic education for development that it was originally meant for.
“It is worrisome to realise that our children, who are our future are being traumatized because of their choices of education. From the beginning of my life, I never dreamt to be a university graduate. I deliberately acquired polytechnic education because my mission as a child was too technical knowledge to build and industrial nation along with other like minds.
“But sadly, because of this unnecessary persecution of polytechnic products, I have been compelled to waste time, money and energy to seek university education after 23 years of leaving school! And memos written to the government and the ministries have yielded no positive result,” Olokoba lamented.
While reacting to the impending law to eradicate the disparity between the two certificate, the public analyst said, “in as much as I agree with the step, I disagree with the nomenclature; Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) in the place of the famous Higher National Diploma (HND),” saying, “we can do the needful without tampering with designation.”
In conclusion, the youth leader said, since the development is not helping the country to developed, “it is high time we retrained those handling our education sector for optimum benefit,” stressing the need to put the country’s development forward as a priority.
