This page has hitherto been mainly interested in issues pertaining to technology or technical matters. This is the reason it would remain restless till Nigeria, and its likes, desist from misplacing priorities with frivolities.
Today, our focus is on the Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES). It is a skill acquisition initiative designed by the Nigerian government to expose and prepare the undergraduates in universities, polytechnics, monotechnics as well as colleges of education for the industrial work situation they are likely to encounter after graduation.
The SIWES has conspicuously been on the decline for decades now that if drastic measures aren’t taken towards addressing the lingering anomaly, the scheme is liable to go into extinction in no distant time.
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The Act establishing the Scheme made it to be a planned and supervised training programme based on specific learning and career objectives and geared toward developing the occupational competencies of the participants. It is generic, cutting across over 60 programmes in the universities, over 40 in the polytechnics/monotechnics, and about 10 in the colleges of education.
It isn’t meant for a particular course of study or discipline, though it was introduced mainly for the sake of technically-inclined ones. Since inception, it has been reckoned to be an innovative phenomenon in human resources development in Nigeria.
While some institutions and disciplines permit SIWES’ duration for only three to six months, others go for up to one year. The programme, which permits the affected students to seek for Industrial Training (IT) or Teaching Practice (TP), as the case may be, in any establishment of their choice, has ab initio been a cause of concern to education and economic planners, particularly with respect to graduate employment and impact on the general societal development.
On the other hand, there are equally mixed feelings among education stakeholders concerning how much of the programme is actually helpful to students’ academic performance and job readiness after graduation.
Whatever positive impact the SIWES has thus far created on the students’ wellbeing and the society at large, the truth is that the primary purpose for which the programme was implemented has recently been relegated to the background.
The prevalence of the inability of SIWES’ participants to secure employment having undergone the Scheme, or even perform adequately if eventually employed, casts doubt on its continuing relevance to the contemporary industrial development drive in Nigerian society. This obvious lapse isn’t unconnected with negligence and/or apathy on the part of the trainees, trainers, concerned institutions, and the government.
It’s noteworthy that most of the undergraduates dodge the Scheme on a regular basis, thereby making mockery of its usefulness. They prefer indulging in activities that would fetch them money, to going for the technical knowledge. To this set of individuals, partaking in the industrial Scheme is simply a waste of time and energy.
In view of this misconception, when the programme is meant to take place, you would see them participating in all sorts of inconsequential menial jobs, or even gambling and what have you, just for the aim of raising some cash. This growing mentality of placing money before knowledge has contributed immensely in endangering the prospect of the laudable Scheme.
Those who bring out time to participate in the SIWES, are prone to one challenge or the other. It’s worth noting that a greater percentage of the trainees are not paid or remunerated by the establishments in which they are serving, not even stipend.
They would end up making use of their personal funds to service their transportation and accommodation fees while undergoing the Scheme. Pathetically, they are expected to be present at the workplace every day whilst the core staff are entitled to take some days off.
It’s more worrisome to realize that most of these trainees are overused by the firms. Rather than teaching the needful, the supposed trainers would engage them in unnecessary activities, hence making them lose interest in the actual training that necessitated their presence at the firm.
Worse still, most of the institutions involved don’t show any concern. They do not cough up time to supervise the students in their respective places of assignment. Ridiculously, in most cases, the schools would remain ignorant of where the students are undergoing the training till the duration of the programme elapses.
This particular loophole has over the years served as an advantage to those who never participated in the Scheme. In this case, during the SIWES defence at their institution, the affected student or anyone who dodged the programme would claim to have undergone the training in any establishment of his or her choice, and the supposed supervisor would never bother to ascertain the truth.
The unserious undergraduates would, in effort to substantiate their claims, make use of the stamp of a firm that does not exist anywhere on earth. Sometimes, the students go the extra mile of forging the stamp or seal of a known established company. The laxity of the concerned authorities would definitely give room for such illegality or malpractice to excel.
Inter alia, funding of the SIWES hasn’t been encouraging in recent times. The Industrial Training Fund (ITF) – the body responsible in the day-to-day funding of the initiative – currently appears incapacitated, probably owing to lack of adequate allocation of funds from the government and other financiers.
Most times, the students would be deprived of the statutory allowance they are entitled to after participating in the Scheme. Those who were lucky to receive theirs had to wait for a long time. This ugly phenomenon has overtime told on those who really participated in the programme.
The SIWES is obviously yearning for resuscitation, to assert the least. The present apparent moribund state experienced by the scheme can only be properly addressed by revisiting the extant Act that bind it with a view to making amends where need be. Such a step would enable every authority involved to start seeing the initiative as the needed tool towards the anticipated, or perhaps ongoing, economic diversification.
The policies surrounding the Scheme ought to categorically specify what is expected of the trainee, trainer, institution, as well as the governments at all levels, as regards the sustenance of the Scheme. Hence, there’s need for an exclusive viable law enforcement agency that would penalize or prosecute any defaulter from any of the concerned four parties as listed above.
It’s indeed high time we revived this technical-oriented initiative whose motive truly means well for nation building. This can only be holistically actualized by changing all the flat tyres that have succeeded in crippling the journey so far.
Nevertheless, for these bad tyres to be duly expunged, we as a people must be prepared and ready to tell ourselves nothing but the gospel truth.