By Giwa SHILE
The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) says shortage of funds and delay in releases of allocated funds are grossly undermining the quality of technical education in the country.
The Executive Secretary of the board, Dr. Masa’udu Kazaure made the remark in Kaduna when House of Representative Committee on Tertiary Education and Services visited the board on Friday.
“NBTE is making every effort in ensuring quality and relevance of technical and vocational education in Nigeria through quality teaching, assessment and certification.
“But this is being undermined by inadequate funding of the sector. Even the little funds appropriated to the board are not being released on time,” Kazaure said.
According to him, for technical education to be relevant, employers must be confident that their employees received quality training and acquired the needed capacity to add value.
The NBTE boss called for increased funding of the sector and timely release of funds to enable the board to build the technical, creative and innovative skills needed in developing the nation.
The Chairman of the committee, Malam Aminu Suleiman, told journalists after the meeting that they were in the board to assess the 2018 budget performance of NBTE.
Suleiman commended the NBTE management for the prudent management of the little financial resources released to the board from June to date.
“From the record before us, there is a clear evidence of prudent management of the resources by the management of the NBTE based on the little they have received.
“We encourage the board to continue in this manner in accordance with the policy of the current government on prudent and transparent management of resources,” he said.
He, however, expressed disappointment over the delay in the release of allocated funds for capital projects and other running cost that would enable the board impact on the lives of Nigerians.
“What we had on our table at the National Assembly was a budget performance of 30 and 35 per cent in most government agencies, but what we have seen here and in other agencies was not more than 20 to 25 per cent.
“This is disturbing, because we have only two months to exit 2018 and the people have not felt the impact of the budget due to delay in the releases of funds to implement government policies and programmes,” Suleiman said.
He assured that the National Assembly will ensure that necessary steps are taken to address the ugly trend.
