The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) says it will begin the indexing of students in schools to ensure that institutions don’t exceed admission quotas for engineering programmes.
Speaking during an interview with NAN, Sadiq Abubakar, COREN president, said the council would ensure that tertiary institutions only admit the number of students they can effectively handle.
He said COREN would make oath-taking and induction of engineering students after graduation a mandatory exercise, just like it is done in the medical and pharmaceutical sectors.
“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,” he said.
“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 council would ensure that whether in the public or private sector, the rules of dichotomies, regulations, and placement of fresh engineering graduates are well-defined in the civil service.
On the issue of quackery, Abubakar said the menace was caused by 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,” he said
“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 in handy in the issue of IGR and non-funding policy by the federal government.”
Abubakar noted that 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,” he added.
“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 the council heartily welcomed the non-funding policy of the federal government, adding that it would give the organisation the force to regulate all the agencies in the built industry.
While allaying the fears that it would mean higher charges for the registration of engineers, Abubakar said the council would rather begin to enforce penalties for non-compliance, as in the case of internal quackery.