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The House of Representatives Committee on Federal Polytechnics and Higher Technical Education has identified performance as the sole condition for government agencies to request improved funding for their operations in 2025.
The Chairman of the Committee, Fuad Laguda, stated this on Friday during a presentation by the Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education, Professor Idris Bugaje, at the 2025 budget defence hosted by the Committee.
He noted that agencies must judiciously utilise available resources before asking for more. Their performance should determine why additional resources should be allocated.
He said, “Performance is crucial. That is what will help us move forward in 2025. It is an acceptable and well-known fact that the Polytechnics are poorly funded. We know that! But we need to justify our need for more and show why we need more. To be honest with ourselves, have we been able to do that? That is the question we need to answer.
“And if we speak truthfully, we know we are not doing well in that area. Not all of us, but most of us are not performing well. The whole essence of this committee is to bring out the best in us and to implement corrective measures where necessary.”
Justifying the need for adequate funding for the NBTE, the lawmaker emphasised that technical institutions must be properly equipped to provide the manpower needed for the nation’s economy.
He called for better collaboration between polytechnic institutions and various stakeholders. He urged rectors to be more proactive by introducing modern syllabuses and relevant courses tailored to their immediate environments.
Earlier, the Executive Secretary had, while presenting an overview of the agency’s 2024 budget performance and the 2025 proposed estimates, called for an increase in its budgetary allocation to recruit more personnel. This would allow the NBTE to properly supervise the activities of over 700 polytechnics and other institutions across the country.
“For personnel, we are seeking improvement because we have about 700
institutions to visit, and our staff strength is just 330, which is very low. Similar agencies like ours have more staff, fewer institutions, and more funds to carry out their duties, but our personnel costs are very low. We want this increased so we can inject more staff to manage these visits,” he said.
Speaking on the agency’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), the Executive Secretary explained that there are charges paid by institutions, which are not constant but are based on specific activities. These charges are applied during accreditation visits and other activities.
The Executive Secretary of the NBTE added, “We only charge a service fee when we go for accreditation. It used to be N75,000, but we have increased it to N150,000 per programme. We then give 50 per cent to the Federal Government. For the whole of 2024, we ended up with just N25 million in IGR, which is extremely low.
“We have about 200 programmes, and these need to be increased, introducing more contemporary ones. It’s not every year that we visit every polytechnic for all these programmes. Therefore, for this year, our IGR is disappointingly low, at just around N25 million. Our capital performance for 2024 is at 50 per cent; we are yet to receive the remaining 50 per cent.”
