• President laments activities of unregistered, unqualified practitioners
• Pushes tougher sanctions, stronger regulation to curb infrastructure failures
Emmanuel Addeh in Abuja
The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) has announced that the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) have approved the enforcement of admission quotas for engineering programmes in Nigerian universities, describing the move as a major step towards improving the quality of engineering education and graduates.
President of COREN, Prof. Zubair Abubakar, disclosed this yesterday in Abuja while briefing journalists ahead of the 34th COREN Engineering Assembly scheduled for July 13 to 15 in Abuja.
Abubakar said the new admission quota regime would place engineering programmes on the same footing as medicine, law and pharmacy by ensuring institutions admit only the number of students they have the capacity to train effectively.
“COREN has obtained NUC endorsement and JAMB approval to enforce admission quota for all engineering programmes in Nigerian universities similar to medicine, law, pharmacy, etc to improve the standards, quality and hands-on competencies of engineering graduates for enhanced employability. COREN also works closely with NBTE for similar results in the polytechnic system,” he stated.
He explained that the council also secured the reintroduction of oath-taking and indexing of engineering graduates to enhance professional tracking, while reviving the mandatory one-year Engineering Residency Programme (ERP) for degree and Higher National Diploma graduates before the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
According to him, the residency programme, which is backed by law, will expose graduates to practical industry experience through structured placements in engineering organisations before their NYSC deployment.
Abubakar, however, expressed concern over the continued activities of unregistered and unqualified engineering practitioners, blaming them for many cases of infrastructure failures, building collapses and industrial accidents across the country.
“The nation continues to witness incidents of infrastructure failures, building collapses, industrial accidents and the activities of unqualified persons engaged in engineering practice. These occurrences not only result in the loss of lives and valuable investments but also diminish public confidence in the engineering profession,” he said.
He stressed that this year’s Engineering Assembly, with the theme: “Advancing Public Safety in Nigeria through Strategic Engineering Regulation, Enforcement, and a Tiered Sanctioning Regime,” would focus on strengthening engineering governance to protect lives, public infrastructure and national investments.
Abubakar said that the council had intensified nationwide inspections of engineering projects and established five regional steering committees, 22 state technical committees and 22 engineering monitoring committees to improve compliance with engineering standards.
The COREN president added that the council had also strengthened its enforcement architecture by training and certifying 239 engineering failure investigators and setting up investigation panels in Abuja and several states to handle engineering failures and professional misconduct.
In addition, he said 868 engineering programme implementers in universities and polytechnics, as well as 839 evaluators drawn from academia and industry, had been trained and certified to improve the quality of engineering education and accreditation.
Despite the many achievements, Abubakar listed persistent activities of unregistered practitioners, weak compliance with engineering standards, inadequate resources for monitoring, poor enforcement by project owners, delays in prosecuting engineering misconduct and deteriorating infrastructure arising from poor maintenance culture among the major challenges confronting the profession.
He said COREN would continue to pursue legislative amendments to strengthen the Engineers Registration Act and introduce a tiered sanctioning regime that would impose penalties proportionate to the gravity of professional misconduct, ranging from corrective measures and mandatory retraining to licence suspension, withdrawal and prosecution.
Besides, Abubakar emphasised that the council would continue leveraging digital technologies, including artificial intelligence and data analytics, to strengthen engineering oversight and ensure engineering regulation remains responsive to emerging technological and infrastructure challenges.
For his part, Registrar of COREN, Prof Okorie Austine, spoke on the importance of the press in creating public awareness about safety, highlighting the determination of the organisation to ramp up enforcement despite numerous challenges.
“Funding is one of our headaches in ensuring that regulation is taken to the 774 local governments in this country…we have to deepen regulatory advocacy,” he added.