Time For YabaTech To Become A University, Said Alakija

The founder of Rose of Sharon foundation, Dr. (Mrs.) Folorunsho Alakija has declared that the 70th year old institution, Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech), ought to have become University by now.

During the courtesy visit of Yabatech Management to Alakija in her Rose of Sharon Towers Victoria Island recently, she noted that Yabatech is the premier tertiary institutions in Nigeria which have been in existence for a long period; and the College is ripe to become University.

The richest woman in Africa encouraged the Management to surmount whatever the challenges before the College; and put more effort into ensuring that the status of the institution changes as soon as possible.

The Rector of Yabatech, Engr. Obafemi Omokungbe in his opening speech explained that the courtesy visit is to appreciate Mrs. Alakija for her numerous kind gesture to the College and to familiarize with College’s illustrious fellow to intimate them of our plans.

“We are planning to inaugurate Board of Fellows made up of distinguished Nigerians who are recipients of the College Fellowship award that will be partners in progress; we will tell them our needs and the areas that they can be of help to us individually and collectively. The endowment fund will be launched to take active part for development project especially Epe campus which is begging for infrastructural development.”

Alakija is an illustrious fellow of Yabatech, she is one of the biggest individual donors to the College; her latest gesture was the donation of Skill Acquisition Centre, she has promised to equip the centre with necessary facilities.

Yabatech To Begin Open Distance Learning, Train Lecturers On Initiative

Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech) in collaboration with National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) organized Open Distance & Flexible Learning (ODFL) training, titled “train the trainer workshop” for her lecturers drawn from twelve departments approved for the take-off of ODFL by NBTE.

The vision of NBTE for all Polytechnics in Nigeria is to adopt Distance learning and make judicious use of it to the maximum.

NBTE had trained lecturers from various Polytechnics and has mandated them to go into their respective schools to train others, in order to spread the knowledge of distance learning in all departments, so that ODFL will kick off in Nigerian Polytechnics.

Speaking at the workshop, the Director of Flexible Skill Development (FSD) Dr. I.A. Abdul welcomed the participants and advised them to pay rapt attention to the facilitators and ask necessary question.

The representative of NBTE, Elder Ayo Aroge commended the workshop and encouraged the participants to go back to their departments after the training to train other staff on how to use the platform.

Aroge stated that he was happy because ODFL is not new in Yabatech because FSD has been planted in the College which has germinated and it is growing.

“Tertiary Institution E-resource is a project to capture the former sector. NBTE is saying that student can stay at home to receive lecture; it is practicable all over the world and we are finding it difficult to plant it here, how can we capture the heart of students in this aspect? They are familiar with social media; let us transform it to learning because students are technology compliance. NBTE is initially planning for 70% to 30% i.e 70% for online learning while 30% is for face-to-face revision, practical and examination, it will move next to 90% to 10% and will eventually transform to 100% online. I, therefore, encourage the partakers to be active and at the end of the day they will be better for it”.

Earlier in his speech, Yabatech Rector Engr. Obafemi Omokungbe explained that for over seventy years our education system has relied on face-to-face methods of classroom teaching, however, to be able to maintain our leading position in the future, Yabatech must develop and perfect her ODFL system to meet the demand of time. ODFL is one of the most rapidly growing fields of education and it will be an important element of future education and training systems.

“On May 24, 2017, the NBTE approved the implementation of ODFL in 12 programmes for Yabatech and 29 for other Polytechnics. Prior to this approval, the College established the FSD centre in April 2016 with 3 departments, one of which is ODFL department. The ODFL department of the FSD centre came up with a draft ODL policy for the College in January 2017 but its implementation was suspended pending the launching of the NBTE/M8 FSD/TIER project. Yabatech has been an active participant in the FSD/TIER project since inception mainly because of our belief in potential of ODFL to increase access to quality Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in formal and non-formal sector”.

“The promise of ODFL remains unfulfilled in many educational institutions in spite of their good initiatives due to their failure to recognize key planning and implementing steps. At Yabatech we ensured a great deal of planning with careful and systematic implementation strategy to avoid pitfalls and unnecessary failures. Extensive capacity development is one of such strategies and that is the focus of this staff training.” He added.