Agric colleges seek inclusion in TETFUND

According to Prof. Garba H. Sharubutu, who led a delegation to visit the Presidential Adviser to the President on Agriculture, Dr Baraka Sani, Monday in Abuja, their exclusion has also denied the colleges of infrastructural development.He said the Colleges of Agriculture had benefited in the Education Trust Fund (ETF) intervention “up till 2010 when they […]

According to Prof. Garba H. Sharubutu, who led a delegation to visit the Presidential Adviser to the President on Agriculture, Dr Baraka Sani, Monday in Abuja, their exclusion has also denied the colleges of infrastructural development.
He said the Colleges of Agriculture had benefited in the Education Trust Fund (ETF) intervention “up till 2010 when they were excluded, adding that “while the intervention lasted, the colleges experienced remarkable upgrading and enhancement in infrastructure and learning facilities.”
Prof. Sharubutu who is the chairman of NACHCARD, a body comprising provosts of the colleges, said it was unfair to deny the colleges of opportunity to benefit from TETFUND intervention on the ground that they were monothechnics.
He said: “The academic programmes are regulated by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) as polytechnics, students are admitted through the UTME as every other tertiary institution in the country and they colleges award national and higher national diploma as polytechnics, with the students observing the national youth service.
“The current emphasis and focus on agricultural development, particularly towards wealth and job creation and reduction of unemployment requires that training the youth on agriculture should not be toyed with.”
In her remarks, the Presidential Adviser on Agriculture Baraka Sani promised to take their complaints to President Goodluck Jonathan, advising the heads of the colleges to lobby their representatives at the National Assembly for a review of the law excluding the colleges from the fund.
The presidential adviser decried lack of replacements for aging farmers by younger generation, saying: “Today’s farming is technologically driven and to get a new set of farmers, we need to catch them young before they make up their minds to do other things in life.”
She lamented that low enrolment of students was not peculiar to agric colleges as universities were also affected, saying: “Even in universities, the enrolment has dropped because they consider agric as a dirty job. We are trying to change that perception.”
She expressed satisfaction with the effort of the federal government to transform agriculture, saying it has led to the reduction in food import by about 35 percent.