Poor funding and lackadaisical attitude demonstrated by successive governments towards information technology (IT) are some of the causative factors directly responsible for law IT literacy in the country. It is also responsible for the nation’s backwardness in the area of technological education.
Hon. Farouk Lawan, Chairman, House of Representatives Committee on Education, made the observation in Abuja.
But Dr. Igwe Aja-Nwachukwu, Minister of Education, disagreed with Lawan. Rather, he said, government was worried at the lack of information on the utilization of resources allocated to polytechnics and the low level of internally generated revenue.
Both of them spoke at the national workshop on Funding Diversification in Polytechnics (FDP) organized by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to deliberate on issues affecting funding of technological education in Nigeria.
The minister, however, charged the nation’s tertiary institutions to be in the fore front of the campaign for transparency and accountability and be more creative in addressing their additional incomes.
Aja-Nwachukwu disclosed that between 2003 and 2007, the federal government had committed about N98 billion to federal polytechnics, whereas, within the same period, the federal polytechnics have only been able to generate N9.2 billion.
