COREN starts indexing pupils and addresses internal quackery

The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) has announced that it will start indexing students in schools to make sure that establishments don’t exceed admission quotas for engineering programmes.

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja, Prof. Sadiq Abubakar, president of COREN, made this statement.

He claims that the council has an education and accreditation section that will be in charge of monitoring student enrollment and making sure that colleges only admit the number of students they can manage.

According to him, the council would require students to take an oath and be inducted after graduation, exactly like in the medical and pharmaceutical industries, stressing that engineering is a constantly changing field.

“Students must be indexed in order for us to track the implementation and enforcement. If you are not indexed, you will not be mobilised for NYSC, much like in medicine.

To enforce the posting of engineers for primary assignment, “We are going to work hand in hand with them. Additionally, we spoke with the NYSC Director-General.

“We object to engineering graduates teaching in elementary or secondary schools. Abubakar stated, “We are attempting to assert our own legitimate position.

The head of COREN stated that the council would make sure that the civil service had well defined norms on dichotomies, regulations, and placement of recent engineering graduates whether they worked in the public or private sector.

When it comes to quack medicine, Abubakar claimed that the danger came from those who pretended to be engineers but were actually not.

“There are mechanical, electrical, structural, civil, and structural engineers on the job site; everything is in order.

“However, it is quackery when a civil engineer handles a structural engineer’s duties.

“If you are licenced, qualified, and up to date but are performing someone else’s work for which you lack the necessary skills, that is internal quackery.

It has been helpful in the case of IGR and the Federal Government’s non-funding policy, therefore we are going to translate many of these to non-compliance, he said.

The best global practise, in Abubakar’s opinion, is for a regulator not to receive funding from those it is tasked with controlling.

“In the Washington Accord, we were successful. In the past six to seven years, financial independence has been one of the indicators used to evaluate us.

We are aware that a worldwide engineering regulator does not approach the public sector with a demand for funding, the man said.

The president of COREN stated that the council enthusiastically embraced the federal government’s non-funding policy and that it would give the council the power to control all the agencies in the built-industry.

While allaying concerns that greater registration fees for engineers would result, Abubakar stated that the council would prefer to start enforcing fines for non-compliance, as in the case of internal quackery.

According to NAN, COREN was founded in 1970 as a statutory authority of the federal government, with the charge of regulating and controlling the country’s engineering practise, education, and training in all of its facets.