The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has rejected a plan by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to outsource its quality assurance responsibilities to private vendors.
The ASUP leadership described it as an attempt to commercialize the regulation of polytechnics in Nigeria.
In a statement made available to the media on Saturday, ASUP President, Shammah Kpanja, cautioned that the policy may undermine the credibility and integrity of the accreditation process for technical and vocational education institutions.
Kpanja warned that the union would work with key stakeholders to resist the move, stressing that allowing private consultants, who are profit-driven entities, to handle accreditation would weaken regulatory oversight and increase financial burdens on institutions already struggling with inadequate funding.
The policy, which allegedly has the backing of the Minister of Education, seeks to transfer NBTE’s accreditation and quality assurance responsibilities to private vendors.
The NBTE cited inadequate personnel as justification for the move, noting that it currently regulates 789 institutions across the country.
However, ASUP insists that outsourcing such a critical function to private firms would create conflicts of interest, compromise standards, and jeopardize the confidentiality of sensitive institutional data.
Kpanja explained that at the core of NBTE’s mandate is the quality assurance bouquet comprising principally of accreditation and reaccreditation of programs of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).
“This responsibility is currently the target of this outsourcing policy,” he said.
“This strange policy brings to question the continued relevance of the NBTE as a public institution,” he added.
He said, “The key justification of the NBTE in pursuing this policy is the fact that NBTE currently regulating Seven Hundred and Eighty-Nine (789) institutions covering the nation’s TVET sector is overwhelmed by the number of institutions in its regulatory portfolio.
“This fact has been severally pointed out by our Union over the years culminating in the demand and current legislative efforts at unbundling the current NBTE and creation of a dedicated Commission to regulate the tertiary division of TVET in the form of a National Commission for Polytechnics and in alignment with the other two tiers of tertiary education in the country.”
The ASUP President reiterated the Union’s demand for the unbundling of the NBTE and the establishment of a dedicated National Commission for Polytechnics, similar to regulatory bodies overseeing universities and colleges of education.
He recalled that at a recent stakeholders’ meeting convened by the NBTE on March 4, 2025, participants had rejected the outsourcing proposal and instead advocated for the digitization of quality assurance processes.
The union further demanded a roll back of the outsourcing/commercialization policy: a fast tracking of the migration to digital platforms for quality assurance activities with enforceable deadlines for institutions and the provision of adequate technical support and access to appropriate funding intervention platforms to drive the digitization move.
