The Chairman of the Council of Heads of Polytechnics and Colleges of Technology in Nigeria (COHED), who is also the Rector, Kwara State Polytechnic, Alhaji Ma’asud Elelu, in this interview with ADEKUNLE JIMOH, disclosed that the institution has developed a technology using cow dung to power its generators. Elelu,bwho was recently elected as the Chairman of the Commonwealth Association of Polytechnics and Technical Universities in Africa (CAPA), also spoke on other sundry issues.
What is Commonwealth of Association of Politechnics and Technical Universities( CAPA) all about?
CAPA has come of age. It used to be for polytechnics alone when it was started. It is a body of all technical, vocational and educational training institutions in Commonwealth in Africa. It was established in 1977 in Ghana then and the headquarters is in Nairobi, Kenya. Ever since the time it was established, more countries have joined. This body caters for all technical issues of all Commonwealth countries in Africa. It was at the last conference that took place in Abuja August, this year,b that I was elected as the chairman of the organisation. CAPA is now very enlarged as many countries have come on board. African Union countries have also joined. Many CAPA activities are being sponsored by AU; because of the importance of skills all over the world, various economies of the developing countries all over the world have realised that it is necessary to acquire skills irrespective of the level of education.
CAPA has been campaigning against unemployment and the way out of this is technical education and skills acquisition. That is why at the last meeting in Abuja, several ministers of different countries were in attendance. In a nutshell, CAPA oversees the activities of all TVET institutions. It makes sure that the resources available in all TVET institutions are harnessed to the advantage of the various countries. There are various ways of doing that. They include exchange programmes and exchange of lecturers from different member-countries; capacity building is another thing and skills upgrading. One of the functions of CAPA is to harness the resources of various institutions and ‘sell’ these resources to various corporate bodies, particularly organised play private sector. It also partners with the private sector to ensure that the resources are obtained back into the institutions for research purposes, for innovation such that the institutions will be empowered to bring out new ideas that will be given to the industries.
CAPA is a body that liaises with governments, private sector and institutions. It will interest you that Nigeria has always been providing the secretariat of CAPA, sponsored by Nigerian government. This is the first time the chairmanship of CAPA is coming to Nigeria and by the grace of God, it has come to me. So I will now oversee the activities in terms of relating to industries and governments for curriculum development and what the industries want. The era of transference of technology has passed. CAPA is encouraging every individual institution to look at what it can excel in. Each country should go by its comparative advantage. In Nigeria today, we should be known by our engineering expertise. For example if you want to talk about polymer you either go to Kaduna Polytechnic of Yaba Technology.
That is what CAPA is doing. It is also getting information database of the expertise that is available in various institutions that can be exchanged. That is the role CAPA is playing to bring all the players together to see how we can maximize the usage of the skills we have and also provide new skills that we don’t have. How does the Council of Heads of Polytechnics and Colleges of Technology in Nigeria (COHED) factor into this? All the polytechnics in Nigeria are institutional members of CAPA and they take part in its activities.
What we do is to ensure that all countries bring together their technical universities and polytechnics as a body and register them with CAPA. Each institution has something it pays and what it benefits from CAPA. You mentioned that Yaba Technology and Kaduna Polytechnic have expertise in polymer; Kwara Polytechnic is known for what? Our engineering is superb. You will not believe it; some universities come here for practicals. What we have, they don’t have. Now, what we are trying to do is to specialise is some areas. We are also known for mineral resources and other areas. We are lucky we have expertise in mineral resources because of Itakpe and Ajaokuta in those days. The government of that time recognised us.
So we are like a centre of excellence for mineral resources. We are trying to specialise into some areas. For instance, we are starting a programme on welding and fabrication. We identified that it is an area Nigeria needs seriously. Oil companies are crying for that particularly deep sea welding. We don’t have Nigerians who are good in that. Angola is known for that now. Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) has agreed to assist us. IITA visited Kwara Polytechnic. They heard about what we are doing and they came to check all those things. Agriculture is doing well here; that is why IITA said we should go into memorandum of understanding with them. Those products we have done will now be patented.
We will have a licence to develop them further and then we will be getting something from that. That will also encourage us to develop more and more. For example, something that is making wave is our biogas. We are running our generators with the gas we developed from cow dung. It is clean, smokefree and efficient. Two, we are getting petroleum from used tyres; TETFUND is assisting us with funds to do research in that regard. We made a presentation to them and they saw the importance of that. That is why all our institutional based research grants for the past five years have been accessed. We are one of the institutions that have done that. TETFUND is also now sponsoring publication of journals for us.
This is because of what they have seen that the institution is doing. Politics of polytechnics nationwide, I will not call it politics. Our achievements are speaking for us. When I became chairman of COHED, I did not vie for it. Then the CAPA, I never knew that they had been planning it. They made me vicechairman at the South African conference last year. I think they have a way of assessing people. I think among the criteria is the stability of academic calendar. Secondly, ability to run the institution with minimum assistance from outside; that means you have the foresight to bring in certain initiatives to run the polytechnic. And today in Kwara Polytechnic, you know how we have been running the institution.
I think thirdly, our ability to manage the funds of the polytechnic. Just recently, I received an email that all the bursars of polytechnic in Nigeria should come and understudy how we have been managing the funds of the polytechnic without incurring any debt. We are paying workers salaries without taking loans from any bank. Yet,our school fees are nothing compared to those of other institutions around. They look at prudence and staff training too. And some of our students are excelling. About three years ago when Alhaji Aliko Dangote wanted to recruit people from the polytechnics and they went for exams. At the end of the day, all our students that participated in the examination performed well and they were given the jobs before graduation. These are some of the things they looked at, coupled with non-closure of our institution due to strike. They also looked at the exposure of the man in the saddle.
Some of the conferences in and outside Nigeria, I sponsored myself. But we are getting the reward now. Despite the paucity of funds, we have been able to achieve this much. All these have stood us in good stead for all the considerations. We use our school fees to pay salaries. The school fees ought to serve as our source of internally generated revenue (IGR), unlike the federal polytechnics that have school fees as their IGR as the government pays their salaries. The number of projects we have been able to attract to this place is also another unique point for us. We get all these projects through goodwill and some element of honesty.
TETFUND has provided us with toilets on campus and even buses because we have prudently managed what they have been giving us. Disparity between polytechnics and university graduates: We have done that. When I came on board, this disparity was done. We went to the extent of lobbying. Left to me, there shouldn’t be anything called disparity as each system of education is unique in its own. Parity ought not to exist if the economy had not gone bad. As a result of that, people were looking for jobs in the public sector as private companies closed down.
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