Senate: - HND Discrimination.

The Bill for an Act to Abolish and Prohibit Dichotomy and Discrimination between First Degrees and Higher National Diploma in the same Profession/Field and related matters on Wednesday scaled second reading in the Senate. The bill, which scaled second reading after heated debate at plenary on its relevance, seeks to resolve controversy over wage disparity and gross discrimination against HND holder in public and private sectors of the economy. The Senate President, Sen. David Mark in his remarks, said it would be difficult to legislate on the bill, given that polytechnics were not originally established to be degree awarding institutions. He said rather than canvass for abolishion of the dichotomy, polytechnics should be changed to degree awarding institutions. “ The problem here is whether we can legislate on this. I think obviously that is not going to work for several reasons that we have all advanced here. “We can’t legislate here and say you must employ an HND instead of employing somebody with B.SC. “I think it is more of attitude than what we can legislate on but we can get an arrangement where the polytechnics begin to award degrees, in which case the polytechnics will no more be polytechnics; they will be universities,’’ he said. Mark, who did not outrightly condemn the bill, said it should be sent for public hearing, to get the views of relevant stakeholders on the way forward on the issue of dichotomy. Sen. Abubakar Bagudu ( PDP-Kebbi), a member of Senate Committee Education, said if the dichotomy should be abolished, there would be standardisation of policy. He argued that standardisation of policy was vital because universities and polytechnics had different structures. “The university is theory and research oriented as compared to polytechnic which is supposed to turn out industrial ready graduates,’’ he said. Similarly, Prof. Olusola Adeyeye (APC-Osun), the Vice Chairman of Senate Committee on Education, canvassed for the harmonisation of the institutions to enable polytechnics to award degrees. “I believe that for as long as there is difference in admission standard and training for both institutions of learning, there will be difference in employment. “ Let us go the U.S. way and equalise both polytechnics and universities and have specialised institutions to handle the technical aspect.’’ The lawmaker explained that Nigeria inherited the polytechnic system from the colonial masters, who thought of having a middle level manpower where people could be trained without the lengthy period in university. He further explained that UK subsequently abolished the system after meeting the purpose for which it was established to meet its industrial need. “We need to make the admission standard the same for polytechnics and universities; forget the dichotomy issue. It is a lie to say you need HND to run an industrial state,” he said.(NAN)