FG removes ceiling on HND holders’ ranking
By Segun Olatunji, Kaduna
Published: Tuesday, 8 Jul 2008
The Federal Government has removed the ceiling on the salary grade level/ rank that holders of the Higher National Diploma could attain in the public service.

The Federal Government also made the Ordinary National Diploma the new minimum entry point into the public service.

These were contained in a document entitled: “Government White Paper on the Report of the Presidential Committee on the Consolidation of Emoluments in the Public Sector,” obtained by our correspondent in Kaduna on Monday.

According to the 40-page paper, the Presidential Committee on the Consolidation of Emoluments in the Public Sector set up by the immediate past president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in November 2005 under the chairmanship of the former head of the defunct Interim National Government, Chief Earnest Shonekan, had discovered that “Entrants into the public service with HND do not have the opportunity to reach the highest grade even when they are found competent.”

Before the removal of the ceiling on the salary grade level/ rank, the promotion of HND holders in the nation’s public service terminated at Grade Level 14 while their counterparts holding university degrees were allowed to reach level 17.

The committee, therefore, recommended that, “It is desirable for the purposes of relativity that entrants into the public service where such organisations, agencies or institutions operate HAPPS, HATHSS must have the full opportunity to reach the highest grade if they are found competent.”

But in accepting the recommendation of the presidential committee, the Federal Government further directed in the White Paper that, “The dichotomy and ceiling on the Salary Grade Level/Rank attainable by Higher National Diploma holders should be removed.

“OND or its equivalent from any Government recognised institution should be regarded as the new minimum point of entry.

“Salary Grade level 01-05 should be phased out by 1st January, 2008.

“The current scheme of service should be reviewed to reflect the above recommendation.

Justifying the Federal Government’s decision, the White Paper stated, “This is in line with the ideas and spirit behind the current reform programme of the government.”

Good development, but what will happen to those who were employed as level 07 officers with HND in immigration service, prisons and civil defence to mention a few. Will they be given their correct level (i.e. Level 08)??

Water will find a level

NIGERIAN HND HOLDERS NOW FREE

Nigerian firms demand skilled workers; Nigeria needs skilled manual workers as never before. Some young Nigerians refuse to become bricklayers, Fiona Ledger a BBC reporter in Lagos saw it all, and he knew that Communications, electricity and power are crying out for upgrading and better maintenance.
But the idea of a vocational education is looked down upon by many young people just because of discriminations against these groups of professionals that were dedicated to putting young Nigerians through vocational courses and preparing them for jobs in the office and on the building site. Today polytechnic and Technical graduates feel discriminated against, the Higher National Diploma (HND), will not be enough if they are to compete effectively in the market place for jobs.

The polytechnic created was a Middle-level disaster no wonder parent do not want their children in there "Parents will come and tell you they just want their children to be there for one year because they missed university admission for that year and don't want their children sitting around at home." Says a Rector of a Polytechnic.

In the public service despite all efforts to ensure pay parity and equal recognition to HND and B.sc graduates, the situation still remains the same.

We thank the creator for this ceiling removal by the FG.
For instance HND holders are employed on GL 07 (except HND in Engineering with the entry point of 08) the limit to an HND accountancy holder in the bursary or accounts department of an organization is level 13. Whereas a University degree can rise far above that, the Grade Level bar placed on the HND holders who are Civil Servants needs urgent attention.
The division of labour was not to make one cadre superior to the other but discrimination in labor market continues, can this be justified?
It is bad.
Many holders of HND today took Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) exams. Some in fact have eight credits at a single sitting but resorted to the Polytechnic for known reasons, besides each HND program is a five years program at the polytechnic against the 4 years of the University which is now preferred and promoted above level 14 bar placed on the HND.

SUSPENSION OF NSE GRADUATESIP EXAMINATIONS

At the Executive Committee meeting of the Nigerian Society of Engineers, held on 8th June, 2008, the whole exercise of Graduateship Examinations was examined. This was in consideration of various complaints that have been received on the relevance of the examinations and its acceptability.

The complaints have always been on the question of relevance of the certificates to the promotion of the holders in their respective places of work. Many organizations do not accept the certificates hence the holders seem not to be enjoying any benefit for all their efforts. There is also the need to do a thorough examination of the content, conduct and method of evaluation of the examinations to ascertain why many organizations reject them.

In view of this, it has become imperative to review the whole exercise, so as to make the examinations acceptable and relevant to the holders of the Certificate and various establishments. To achieve this, therefore, the Executive Committee has suspended forthwith, the Graduateship Examinations until further notice.

A committee for the review of Graduateship Examinations will soon be constituted.
Meanwhile, please accept the assurances of our highest esteem.

Engr. F.C. Ogolo, FNSE
Executive Secretary

COURTESY: http://www.nse.org.ng/Graduateship_Exam.html

Kindly take note of this if you have planning to take nsege this year. but remember, there is still room at the top and this slight set back is not sufficient enough to discourage you,.

We Shall surely meet at the top


Posted by BEEKOPH WORLD at 23:57 0 co

Now abolished.
Even then, the first examination held by NSE was drawn for 20 candidates but only two showed up and only one wrote the paper. The other spent time to explain why he should not write the examination.
‘In 1985 the NSE introduced a local ladder an equivalent of CE I part II examination through the approval by council, the first exam proper was held in 1988 and by the end of 1990, 693 HND holders and FTC holders had taken the exam’ and for years only 124 had passed the examination and wait again for 2 years before been registered by COREN.
[b]NATE challenged the right of NSE to conduct such exams in court but situation favored NSE as reported by Prof. Ade Ajayi's History of NSE. ‘Among the past debts inherited by Eng. Inuwa may also be reckoned as the sore problem caused by NATE who had taken the NSE to court over the graduateship examination for HND holders’.[/b]The situation became critical when Eng. Inuwa became president of COREN and again used his influence with the Government; he was able to complete the process of amending Decree 55 of 1970. Thus, Degree 27 of 1992 finally renames Technological Engineers as Engineering Technologist. The name that was forced down into the troth of HND Engineering today.
Before this new decree, NATE was involved in the amendment. COREN, agreed to Technological Engineers in fact NATE suggested COREN'S new name "Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) as a way to meet the desire of the HND holders. Several other issues were yet unresolved before some people with personal stake in COREN rushed into the amendment of the decree.
.
NATE as an association has tried very much in championing the right cause of HND holders they were at Aso- Rock on the same issue in the year 2000 just for the removal of this grade level 14 bar and address
The existing qualifications tussle between the polytechnics and universities in Nigeria, whereby the polytechnic graduates are not considered equals of the university graduates can still be a person in life.

@HND-holder
FG have not yet done well, to me i give dem 65%. Until they address the issue of employing HND holders on level 07 instead of 08 they will not get my 100%

Polytechnic education and impact of politics
By Engr. Micheal Esho
Culled from Tribune.

PRIOR to the establishment of Yaba Higher College in 1930, there were various training centers organized by some Government Departments. There was the Lands and Survey Training Centre (1908); Marine Training Centre (1928), the Public Works Department (1931); the Post and Telegraphs (1931) and the Railways (1942). All of them could not satisfy the country’s need for Engineers, Technologists and Technicians as at that time. However, the Welfare Act passed by the British Parliament in 1940 tried to address this problem and it was on the basis of this act that the Nigerian ten-year Technical Education Development Plan was formulated in 1944.
In 1948, in pursuance of the ten-year Development Plan, the Yaba Higher College which was established in 1930 was broken up and the departments were transferred to Ibadan where they formed the nucleus of the then newly established University College, Ibadan. What remained was renamed Yaba Technical Institute. The Yaba Technical Institute of 1948 was meant to train technicians who academically were not of the same status with today’s Polytechnic graduates, even though the Institute inherited the facilities left by the Yaba Higher College. It is apt to say that today’s Yaba College of Technology, and all other institutions in the family of Polytechnics, have really developed in every aspect through the process of evolution to their present enviable status.
In 1949, the colonial government of Nigeria appointed F.J. Harlow, Principal of Chelsea Polytechnic, London and W.H. Thorps, Nigerian Deputy Director of Education (Technical), to assess the need for establishing a College or Colleges of higher technical education in Nigeria. The report of the two-man team led to the establishment in 1952 of three regional Colleges named the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology with branches at Zaria, Ibadan and Enugu. The Zaria branch offered courses in engineering, sub professional Engineering, Architecture, Local Government and Secretarial skills. The Ibadan branch offered courses in Book Keeping and Accountancy, Pharmacy, Science and the Arts, while the Enugu branch offered courses in Mining, Surveying, Estate Management, Science and Arts.
These Regional colleges eventually metamorphosed into the first three regional Universities in the early years of independence namely Ife, Nsukka and Ahmadu Bello Universities, following the report of Ashby Commission for Higher Education in Nigeria in 1959.
Both the Yaba Technical Institute (although lower in status than a Polytechnic) and the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology represent the very early stages of Polytechnic Education in Nigeria, dating back to more than half a century.

Both the Yaba Technical Institute (although lower in status than a Polytechnic) and the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology represent the very early stages of Polytechnic Education in Nigeria, dating back to more than half a century.
It will be right also to point out that the first generation of full blown polytechnics in Nigeria were first and fore-most technical institutes or colleges which were primarily established to train technicians. Examples are Yaba Technical Institute that became Yaba College of Technology (1963), Ibadan Technical College which became Polytechnic Ibadan (1970) and Kaduna Technical Institute that became Kaduna Polytechnic (1964).
The Nigerian Ten-Year Technical Education Development Plan of 1944 was never followed to the letter and so, for one and a half decade the Yaba Technical Institute suffered from a slow emaciated growth up to the dawn of independence. After independence many universities were established with the University of Lagos coming on in 1960. In quick succession Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello and Ife followed.
All the universities started running courses in Engineering just like they did with courses like Law, Theology and so on. However, in Engineering, unlike in these Arts courses, the hood does not make the monk and it was soon discovered that the Engineering graduates produced by the Universities were mostly theoreticians with little or no practical grinding. As Professor Terry rightly said, “nobody ever learnt Engineering from books anymore than a person ever acquired the art of swimming or cycling theoretically in an armchair”.
The ‘folly’ of allowing every university to have a faculty of engineering was soon realized as the country now had a ‘large’ number of University trained Engineers, while there was a dearth of technicians which normally form the middle level manpower. It was like building a house from the roof top. The problem had to be corrected or else…
So, somehow the policy makers shifted their attention to restructuring Yaba College of Technology as if restructuring the College would have solved the problem. For justification, they pointed to records that said that Yaba Technical Institute (note: not Yaba College of Technology) was established to produce middle level manpower. The fact that Yaba College of Technology now had a higher status than the Institute did not matter to them. And so, concerted efforts were made to draw back the College by 30 years to the objectives set for the Yaba Technical institute of 1948. The government, to whom the idea was sold accepted it without question-forgetting all about the ten-year technical education development plan of 1944 which incorporated the objective of producing high level manpower at the close of the ten-year plan.
At the same time the ‘experts’ presented many papers to show that the ‘Yaba boys’ were doing too much theory and so the theory should be reduced so that they would study more practical aspects of their discipline. Curiously, as all these were going on, nothing was done to the syllabus of the University, which had been discovered by that time, to be inadequate, at least in the practical’s.
From then, the Nigerian Society of Engineers (established in 1958) had mounted a war of propaganda both covert and overt to ensure that the products of Yaba College of Technology are regarded and remained as middle level manpower regardless of the fact that the graduates of the College in 1968 were not the same as the graduates of the 1948 institute.
Nigeria of today is quite different from that of 1948. The Yaba Technical Institute of 1948 had since given way to Technical Colleges all over the country producing the much needed middle level manpower for the country. In the same vein, the number of Colleges of Technology has increased from one in 1963 to 56 today and adequately catering for the country’s high and middle level technological manpower needs.
Polytechnics in Nigeria, since inception, had to fight for survival. Even the re-naming of Yaba College of Technology in 1963 was not got on a platter of gold as it came after a very hot struggle. When eventually it came, it came with the enrolment of students for the Higher Technicians Diploma of the City and Guilds of London.
In 1969, the students went on strike again and this time demanded the abrogation of the Higher Technician Diploma and total autonomy for the College. Finally in July 1969, Decree No 23 was promulgated, and at last the vestiges of old Yaba Technical Institute had been removed and in its stead was now a College of Technology. The Yaba College of Technology. Section 1 (a) of Decree 23 of July 1969 states: “To provide courses of instruction, training and research in Applied Science Technology, Commerce, Management and such other fields of learning as the Council may from time to time determine”
Thus Technical Institutes were established to provide more ECONOMICALLY, the training given by several Government Departments, ab initio. Despite the establishment of Technical Institutes, by 1970 it had become evident that Nigeria, a technologically underdeveloped nation, could not (and cannot) compete favorably with others in a high technology - dominated global economy. The second National Development Plan (1970-75) identified shortage of technical manpower as detrimental to the success of the development plan itself. This fact compelled the Federal Government to establish seven Polytechnics via decree No 33 of 25th July, 1979.

The need to regulate technical education brought about the formation of the National Board for Technical Education whose mandate is to oversee and co-ordinate all aspects of Technical and Vocational Education i.e. Polytechnic, Monotechnics, (e.g. School of Surveying, Agriculture e.t.c.) Colleges of Health Technology, Technical Colleges and allied institutions.
The main objectives of technical education as stated in the National Policy on Education (NPE) of 1981 are:
(a) To provide trained manpower in Applied Science, Technology and Commerce, particularly at sub professional grades;
(b) To provide technical knowledge and vocational skills necessary for agricultural, industrial and economic development;
(c) To provide people who can apply scientific knowledge to the improvement and solution of environmental problems for the use and convenience of man;
(d) To give an introduction to professional studies in Engineering and other Technologies;
(e) To give training and impart the necessary skills leading to the production of Craftsmen, Technicians and other skilled personnel who will be enterprising and self reliant;
(f) To enable young men and women have an intelligent understanding of the increasing complexity of technology.
Now let me deal in more detail with the issue of the National Policy on Education. The National Policy on Education which was published in 1981 and is popularly called the 6-3-3-4 system of education departed most profoundly from the system inherited from the British Colonialists. It sought to provide six years primary education followed by a three-year junior and a three – year senior secondary education, culminating in a 4-year University Education. It was expected that the junior secondary school would provide both pre-vocational and academic education which would enable pupils to acquire further knowledge both cognitive and manipulative.
Products of the Junior Schools could then move to technically based schools, such as trade centers or technical colleges, while others would move to the more traditional Grammar School for their Senior Secondary. It was expected to take-off in 1982.
The Federal Government purchased equipment for the Junior Secondary Schools but these were dumped on open fields in schools – no buildings had been built to accommodate the machines and equipment, no teachers were trained to operate them. The manuals for operating these machines were written in languages different from English.

HND Degree holders actually spend 5 years in the course of there study compared to the 4 years most B.Sc degree holders spend. Surprisingly, I find most HND degree holders to be unintelligent despite the fact that they have the technical know how in some specific duties. Well, good-luck to you HND holders, I'm happy for you folks, but I hope you'll be able to meet up with what the nation expects from you.

tobiecxs you are so unintelligent despite the fact that you look like a university degree holder? How can you call HND degree?

tobiecxs:

HND Degree holders actually spend 5 years in the course of there study compared to the 4 years most B.Sc degree holders spend. Surprisingly, I find most HND degree holders to be unintelligent despite the fact that they have the technical know how in some specific duties. Well, good-luck to you HND holders, I'm happy for you folks, but I hope you'll be able to meet up with what the nation expects from you.

May be you are half baked like those you know You seems not to know what is at stake. The truth is that those left in then polytechnics are just those that saw a chance and use the chance that belong to brilliant ones that can move the country forward but ran to university to read the ABIKU degree courses.
Please note that this apply to degree holders too very unintelligent tobiecxs

@HND-holder

why are they employing HND graduates as level 07 officers and Bsc holders as level 08 officers in Customs, immigration, prisons and civil defence??

This is injustice of the highest order and we are very sad about it. Please help us pass our complain to David Mark and Umar Yar'adua.

Todays polytechnic is for science and Technology. Not for immigration. The white paper is out but we must wait for the circulars. The discrimination can not end in One day. Regards

Engineers List Gains in Removal of Bias Against HND Holders


Daily Trust (Abuja)


NEWS
15 July 2008
Posted to the web 15 July 2008

By Abubakar Ibrahim
Abuja

The removal of discrimination against Higher National Diploma (HND) holders in employment opportunities will propel the technological growth of Nigeria, the Nigerian Association of Technologists in Engineering (NATE) has said.

Addressing newsmen at the NUJ press centre in Abuja during the weekend, NATE President, Chief Leo Okereke said the elimination of bias would revitalise Technical Vocational Education (TVE), regenerate student intake into polytechnics, reduce undue pressure in university admission and unnecessary emphasis on paper qualification as well as introduce healthy competition between universities and polytechnics and increase productivity in the civil service.


Other gains include balancing of the man-made imbalance in professional practice, provision of choice in the job market, lending of credence and creditability on polytechnics and their products and changing the face of polytechnics in Nigeria.

Chief Okereke said NATE, a body of practical engineers representing polytechnic graduates has been "in the fight for the emancipation of this group from the claws of the cabals that hoisted this unnecessary discrimination" since its establishment in 1970 and has thirty-two years later won the battle against discrimination.

He commended President Umaru Musa Yar'adua, former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former education minister Oby Ezekwesili, NBTE executive secretary Dr. Nuru Yakubu and members of the Natrional Assembly for "dismantling the monstrous dichotomy, discrimination and stagnation mounted against polytechnics and its graduates in Nigeria for decades".



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Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
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@HND-holder

Let them list the gains well well. But there is no gain when HND holders are still employed and given the same level with NCE holders (i.e. level 07) instead of level 08 in the civil service.

Let them address that issue o, else there is no gain anywhere.

Engineering starts with Level 08

Hnd-holder:

Engineering starts with Level 08

It is possible you don't know what is happenig in the ministries now. HND, whether in engineering or arts start are taken as level 07 officers in immigration, civil defence, prisons and customs. The latest and most annoying is that of customs; they specified the courses they need and Engineering was part of it, but there was a clear distinction:

(i) University Degree holders (Engineering, science, soc sci. etc.) - Superintendant Cadre
(ii) HND holders (Engineering, science, soc sci. etc.) - inspector cadre

Check Daily Trust Newspaper and see how a lot of Nigerians are asking Those concern why the discrimination even when they said HND and Bsc are at par.

We are now at Abuja we are handling related issues. Meet us at women centre in August 28-29 2008.