We are developing new curriculum on interior design with NBTE – Private institute

Interior design is not a popular course of study in Nigeria. Why did you establish a private school that awards diploma in the course? I did not attend interior design courses before I set up the school. It was much later I acquired formal education and training to become a professional interior designer. There are […]

Interior design is not a popular course of study in Nigeria. Why did you establish a private school that awards diploma in the course?
I did not attend interior design courses before I set up the school. It was much later I acquired formal education and training to become a professional interior designer.
There are lots of people practising without the requisite knowledge of interior design and that was what gave me the impetus to set up the school and train people. Someone said I was training people who will later compete with me, and I said it is better to have competitors that are competent than quacks.
Here, we do interior design holistically and also incorporated entrepreneurship as well as card. We introduced entrepreneurship and card because of the experiences I had. When I went to school, I was only taught interior design without entrepreneurship skills and when I was setting up, I had to do everything alone. So, when we were doing our curriculum development, I served as an example. We tried to address the mistakes I encountered when I set up my company and started practising. We teach our students branding; how to choose and register their businesses and even encourage them to register companies. The school also teaches students how to do company profile and social media marketing as well as quotations.  
This is because by the time they graduate and set up their businesses they don’t have to hire someone to do 3D design for them. They can do it at no cost but it will take a lot of time. We teach them these skills so that they can stand on their own. Our own vision is that when our students graduate, they can start business right away and be successful. We also offer them internship if they want.

 The demand for interior design is rising, especially in places like Abuja. Apart from the emergence of new buildings, are there other reasons that led to rise in demand?
Demand is actually the major factor because the real estate is really growing; you see new buildings everywhere. When you leave the city for two months and return, you will see new structures being erected. Another factor is unemployment. A lot of people are jobless and there are still others who don’t enjoy their present jobs, especially women who combine their career with the home front. So, people are now finding alternatives to those stringent working conditions. This is what is contributing to the rise of interior design.

Interior design is a craft that does not really require diploma or degree certificate; once you are familiar with what the industry requires you can go into it. Are there universities that offer first degree in interior design?
We recently learnt that the University of Lagos is starting a degree on interior design but what we want the government to do is to recognize the profession. This will enable the establishment of laws that will guide the profession just like architecture and law. The law will also empower institutions such as the FCT Department of Development Control to incorporate designers in building plans. The department can say that an interior designer has to look at the drawing to ensure that the building is safe and well ventilated. When we started, we knew that our certificates must get the recognition of regulators such as the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE). And while we were applying for certification from the Board, because we were the first to do so, we encountered a lot of challenges. They said we have to have institute in the name, which eventually led to Albedo Institute of Interior Design instead of Albedo Design School. Then, the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) said if you have institute in your name, you can’t be a limited liability company, you have to be limited by guarantee and when you are limited by guarantee, you are not a profit earning organization.
Our students graduate with a National Diploma (ND), after getting the NBTE license but they will not be able to seek further undergraduate studies because no university offers degree in interior design. And they cannot be admitted to study architecture. We are going to pay more attention in our curriculum development, so that when we take it to any university and say this is what our students can do, they can consider them. We are seriously doing curriculum development as part of the requirement of the NBTE. We are doing the development organically; I have a team comprising of interior designers, architects that follows the guidelines of NBTE. We also do a lot of research and study the curriculum of schools abroad. We have some peculiarities in Nigeria and we are trying to tailor our curriculum towards our own needs. We haven’t encountered any challenge rather we have too much information to read thoroughly. We shall submit our work to the NBTE which must be examined by experts there.
We want government to actually develop the curriculum and give to schools. This will improve the building industry. Interior design should be taught at the tertiary level of education but interior decoration requires no special qualification.   

 Taxation seems to be part of your scheme of work. Why?       
As a business person, you need to know your taxation. If you apply for government contracts, they ask you to submit tax clearance certificate. You also need to remit VAT and have your Pencom certificates. You need ITF certificate and have to register with Bureau of Public Procurement. So, we feel that the students need to know taxation.
This is a three months course and we noticed that card is taking much of student’s time so what we are doing now is to give them the basics in interior design and do the card independently; specialized card classes. When you are designing an office, you need to draw your plan so that your client can look at them carefully and it reduces your margin of error.

 Is it true that there are more women than men in the school?  
Interior design is for everybody. So far, we’ve had about four male students since November 2015, when we started, the rest were females.

Do you hope to upgrade your institute to the university status?
When we get our accreditation from NBTE, we shall concentrate on interior design and cards but as time goes on we might set up a university that specializes in arts and craft and computer aided design.