From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
National Board For Technical Education (NBTE), has raised alarm over proliferation of illegal health institutions and colleges across the country, saying that the Board was working closely with the Department of State Services (DSS) to arrest proprietors of such colleges.
The Executive Secretary of the Board, Professor Idris Bugaje who raised the alarm in Kaduna on Thursday, said one of the proprietors of such illegal colleges was arrested on Wednesday after he made attempt to get his graduates enrolled for the NYSC scheme.
Professor Bugaje who was addressing a meeting of Provosts and Proprietors of health institutions and colleges, as well as Registrars of health professional bodies with NBTE management, said, the Board is determined to rid NIgeria of illegal health institutions, as some of them are currently under the DSS investigation.
“I am happy to inform you that, yesterday (Wednesday) at the management meeting of NBTE, we looked at the issues affecting the health colleges and the Management has decided to reduce one of the major impediments; this issue of bank guarantee of N100 million. We have listened to complaints from most of you and we have now reduced the bank deposit guarantee to N25 million.”
Speaking further, the Executive Secretary said, “There are several illegal health institutions across the country, some of them swindling students, collecting money from them and giving them unrecognized certificates. This is of great concern to all of us, not only at the NBTE, professional bodies and I believe to most of you the proprietors of health institutions.
“As we speak today, there are some colleges of health that are being investigated by the DSS; the matter has even reached the table of the Director General of DSS, as he has authorized his state directors to take appropriate actions. I won’t mention the states, but there are two states involved.
“We have also identified some of our staff that are involved in the illegality, some of them have been suspended. We are determined to clean the system because health is the wealth of any nation, nobody can joke with this sub sector. For that reason, we as regulators of any tertiary institution outside the university system we are very concerned.
“NBTE is determined to weed out all those health colleges and institutions that are involved in illegal activities. One of the illegal institutions gave one of our staff N2.5million to facilitate registration. That is illegal constitutionally and even in the sight of God. We have set a committee to investigate the matter and we have asked the staff to return the money, he has to face the full wrath of the law.
“We have reached out to the Registrars of the professional bodies many of whom were also established by acts of the National Assembly to joined hands with us and the provosts, so that we can promote best practices.
“Nigeria today is being seen globally as major hub for skills export. So many of our youths roaming the streets should be engaged in professional training, so that they can get job in Nigeria and even overseas. Though, we are not encouraging brain drain, but if the world need our Nurses, why don’t we continue to train more professional Nurses for export, so that, they can bring foreign exchange to the Nation?
“Many countries today are relying on export of skilled labour as source of foreign exchange. There are countries of the world like Bangladesh who don’t have oil or gas, but mainly exporting textile and skilled labour. The last statistics I heard of Bangladesh is that, they exported about 11million skilled labour to the World, because they have already standardized training and the world look forward to their workers in particular areas of skills.
“Nigeria has been recognized as some of the best in healthcare and that is why the world is looking forward to the Nigerian Nurses and other health workers. So, we need to ensure that we standardize our training.
“So, the reason for today’s meeting is that, we should put heads together with you the Provosts, to let us know what the challenges are. Why are we running programmes illegally. There was a college that we are now investigating, the Proprietor was arrested yesterday in the night. He was running ND and even HND programmes. He was exposed when he contacted NYSC to include his graduates in national service.
“Majority of Nigerian youths today are unemployed, but if we can give them the correct training, they can find opportunities globally. That is why we want to hear from you the proprietors and provosts to know the challenges,” he said.
The meeting is expected to come up with a workable resolution to help the NBTE address the menace of illegal health training institutions in the Country.
