Students of polytechnics across the country under the aegis of the National Association of Polytechnic Students (NAPS) mobilised to the National Board for Technical Education headquarters in Kaduna, to protest the continued discrimination against polytechnic graduates in the country.
The protesting students, chanting solidarity songs, were also seen holding placards with various inscriptions such as “stop discrimination against HND holders, don’t play with our future.”
The protesters who insisted that the dichotomy between HND and BSc must be abolished also demanded to know the whereabouts of implementation of approval to scrap the HND/BSc dichotomy, threatening to shut down the office of the Head of Service (HOS) and the Federal Ministry of Education.
NAPS National Senate President, Sunday Adekanbi, who led the protest, said, “we are at the NBTE headquarters protesting to make federal government understand that HND holders are not second class citizens. We were told that “the implementation letter is yet to be released by the Head of Service to the Ministry of Education, to this effect, we want to know who is holding the letter and why is it taking so long?” He recalled that there was a particular promotion examination which was written in Abuja last year, where HND holders were exempted and only university graduates were allowed to participate.
“We cannot graduate with our contemporaries from the universities and we will keep holding useless certificates, not all universities can accommodate all admission seekers.
The dichotomy between HND/BSc. holders must stop. Meanwhile, the Executive Secretary of NBTE, Dr Mas’udu Adamu Kazaure, who attended to the protesting students in front of the NBTE headquarters assured them that their grievances will be addressed once he gets to Abuja.
“You have followed the right channel of conveying your grievances and I want to assure you that we will do our best to make the authority aware of them,” he told them. He said the dichotomy has been removed, but somehow, there are problems with the implementation of its approval. “So the Ministry of Education and the office of the Head of Service will ensure the issue is addressed.” (The Nation)
