By Gbemisola Adesola
Dr. Wahab Azeez, Provost, Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka in Lagos, says his desire is to see the institution upgraded to a Federal University of Technical Education.
Azeez, who assumed office in May 2019 as the 12th Provost of the college, gave his scorecard at a news conference to commemorate his second year in office.
“The Act that established the college is being amended to allow the school run NCE and degree programmes simultaneously to be transmitted to federal university of technical education so as to service the students who are yearning for degree in technical programmes. We need to make the public know the importance of technical education here in Nigeria; China is giving preference to technical education, being the reason for its progress,” he said.
The Provost said efforts were ongoing with support from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) to improve the current state of the College in the areas of infrastructure, learning, and teaching.
“In all of these things, TETFund has been of great assistance; our programmes are increasing; so, we need to expand and create enabling environment for youths to learn more skills,” he said.
Azeez said the institution lacked adequate teaching infrastructure, had problems of landscape, dilapidated hostel accommodation, inadequate power supply, and misrepresentation of the college, which he said are being addressed.
He said: “We have created more and improved our ventures as part of the efforts to tackle the issue of inadequate funds, and also, to increase our Internally Generated Revenue so that activities we need to carry out do not suffer.
“Now, the issue of water and power supply is being addressed. Alternatively, we got a proposal from a consultant to provide solar energy that we can use to power our streetlights and illuminate the entire environment when there is a power failure.
“We have the construction of a two-story block of classrooms for teaching and offices for use by members of staff, both for academic and non-academic, while our senior staff block we will be changed to have inbuilt toilets.
“In addition, we have acquired equipment like multimedia projectors a d interactive boards for departments, and also, the first-ever 500-capacity lecture theatre, which the college has never had.”
He called for the support of the Lagos State Government given that the Federal Government-owned college was located in Lagos.
He said they wanted the Lagos State Government to know that the college had facilities which could assist students from its technical schools to pursue their career.
On the issue of security, the provost said that arrangements were on the ground for officers from Sabo Police Station, linking up from time to time, in addition to its private measure.
“We are giving serious attention to security, and that is the reason we went further to engage the services of legionnaires to beef up our internal security, while CCTV is being installed in the college,” he said.
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