By Perpetua Onuegbu
Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) says it will begin indexing of students in schools to ensure that institutions don’t exceed admission quotas for engineering programmes.
President of COREN, Prof. Sadiq Abubakar, said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja.
According to him, there is the education and accreditation department within the council that will be overseeing the indexing of students and ensure that institutions only admit the number of students they could effectively handle.
He said that the council would make oath taking and induction of students after graduation mandatory, just like in the medical and pharmaceutical sectors, noting that engineering is an ever evolving sector.
“For us to monitor the implementation and enforcement, students must be indexed. Just like in Medicine, if you are not indexed, you will not be mobilised for NYSC.
“We are going to work hand-in-hand with them to enforce it to the posting of engineers for primary assignment. We have also parleyed with the Director-General of NYSC.
“We don’t want to see engineering graduates going to teach in primary or secondary schools. We are trying to take our own rightful position,” Abubakar said.
The COREN boss said that the council was going to ensure that whether in the public or private sector, the rules of dichotomies, regulations and placement of fresh engineering graduates were well-defined in the civil service.
On the issue of quackery, Abubakar said that the menace was all about those outside the built-industry claiming to be engineers.
“On the site, you have civil engineers, structural engineers, mechanical engineers and electrical engineers; everything is correct.
“But, when a civil engineer is carrying out the responsibility of a structural engineer, that is quackery.
“If you are registered, qualified and up-to-date but you are doing somebody else’s work, which you do not have competence in, that is internal quackery.
“We are going to translate lots of these to non-compliance, and it has come handy in the issue of IGR and non-funding policy by the Federal Government,” he said.
According to Abubakar, the best global practice is for a regulator not to be funded by the people it is supposed to regulate.
“We were successful in Washington Accord. One of the indices for assessing us in the last six to seven years is financial autonomy.
“We know that a regulator in engineering globally does not go cap-in-hand to the public sector to ask for money,” he said.
The COREN president said that the council heartily welcomed the non-funding policy of the federal government, saying that it would give the council the force to regulate all the agencies in the built-industry.
While allaying the fears that it would mean higher charges for registration of engineers, Abubakar said that the council would rather begin to enforce penalties for non-compliance, as in the case of internal quackery.
NAN reports that COREN was established in 1970 as a statutory body of the federal government, with the mandate to regulate and control the education, training and practice of engineering in all aspects and ramifications in the country. (NAN)
