The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) recently expressed its worries about the quality of engineering graduates in the country. In the process, the Council tasked academic staff on outcome-based teaching of Nigerian engineering programmes in the nation’s universities.
The need for lecturers and instructors to acquire the needed skills to enable them to teach and orientate students to merge theory with practical knowledge cannot be overemphasised especially at a time like this.
It is rather very disturbing that our tertiary institutions are churning out graduates and technicians who are either unproductive and/or unskilled to thrive in the labour market. In reality, many fresh graduates find it difficult to fit into the prevailing labour markets because of the quality of education received while on campus.
It is without a doubt that 21st-century education is competence-based, where students are meant to learn to master their chosen careers through learning by practice system.
It has become imperative for university lecturers to know the best teaching and learning process to be adopted so that graduates will perform according to expectations
Education should prepare people to live happier, healthier and more fulfilled in life. And this can only be realised by tailoring the education system to encourage students to learn and develop transferable skills. The intellectual quotient system of education is outdated. Nigeria as a matter of urgency needs a switch to a competency-based educational system to meet up with the global community.
To achieve this aim, we believe and affirm that the time has come when lecturers and instructors at different levels of engineering and technical education in Nigeria must engender outlets where their students go to mechanic villages and/or other similar workshops where they can merge theory with practical knowledge.
This will serve as the springboard for lecturers to help fill the knowledge and skill gaps among engineering students and develop a new crop of engineering practitioners, regulators, and professionals.
Nigerians want to see a country where people are productive and it is at tertiary institutions, among others that we can train these people.
Hence, we join our voice with COREN in making a case for education managers especially the technical and engineering sections to bring skills into teaching. Therefore, lecturers must as a matter of necessity teach to give the students the appreciation that what they are doing is market-driven, sellable, and is something that can change the lifestyle of the graduates.
Students must have the outlet to acquire skills; students must have the outlet to merge theory and practical knowledge. It is a win-win situation for the students and the amateur cum artesanal mechanic.
For instance, if students are sent to the mechanic village and the mechanics on their own learn certain theoretical skills from these students that will help them in better management of the human and material resources they have.
On the other hand, the students will also learn the skill that is required and find more ways to be more innovative, to create the entrepreneurial drive to be the manager of resources.
It has become imperative for university lecturers to know the best teaching and learning process to be adopted so that graduates will perform according to expectations.
This will in a massive way help curb the rising numbers of graduates in the street that are unproductive and are becoming very dangerous to society. We all condemn the practice of yahoo boys, yahoo plus; but we must note that these are not really uneducated people. Indeed,most of them are graduates but they lack the skill and consequently, they do not have what it takes to live and thus they find themselves driven into some of these atrocities.
Read also: Inside Zaria where Nigeria’s pilots, engineers are trained
To tame this ugly development among our young men and women we must teach them how to become responsible and productive citizens. The most important challenge is the quality of education given to young minds.
Everybody is aware that Nigerian engineering graduates are not performing to the expectations of society. Hence, the need to design the most appropriate module to solve this problem from the root causes: which happens to be the teaching and learning process.
Engineers are supposed to engineer. If we are importing products from outside the country that ordinarily could be produced by indigenes, then we have a problem. Our tertiary institutions must adopt a teaching approach that will help students of engineering programmes produce goods and services that are expected from engineers.
It is quite disturbing to have engineers who cannot identify even the sizes of spanners, not to talk of knowing how to couple machine parts.
And to arrest this dispiriting situation, lecturers must upgrade their skills to meet the market needs of the 21st-century labour market and align with international best practices. This will enable them to produce graduates that are skilled, and capable of delivering to expectations.
We admit here that our prescription is a time-consuming venture, but it is certainly worth the sacrifice. Indeed this is perhaps the only viable way in which Nigeria can reduce its current dependence on the international system.
