Kaduna, Feb.19, 2024 (NAN) The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has committed to ensuring that skilled graduates in environmental health specialties are trained at the nation’s higher institutions of learning.
This commitment saw the development of Higher National Diploma (HND) curricula on environmental health technology with options in industrial safety and hygiene and environmental health monitoring and surveillance.
The curriculum development is a collaboration between the NBTE and the Environmental Health Council of Nigeria (EHCON).
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the two bodies, NBTE and EHCON, began the development of curriculum on environmental health specialties in 16 options on Feb. 5.
The specialties were environmental health (8 options), public health (3 options), epidemiology and disease control (3 options), and water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) (2 options).
During the opening of a 7-day pre-critique workshop on the development of the curriculum on Monday in Kaduna, NBTE’s Director of Curriculum Development Department, Dr. Hatim Koko, said they would develop new curriculum content.
“It has not been done before; what we have on the ground is environmental health technology. The wisdom of EHCON brought about some degree of innovation following the fucus of the NBTE’s Executive Secretary,” he said.
Koko explained that the board was unbundling massive course-specific areas that had to do with skills.
He mentioned some courses that were unbundled to include mass communication, computer science and its related options, and now environmental health.
Koko further said the board and EHCON were working on the development of curriculum on 16 options, which had never been done.
He therefore said the EHCON was widening its horizons in maintaining its specific focus on individuals within its areas of regulation and purview of professional regulation.
Koko commended the EHCON’s registrar for the foresight, adding that it would give a sequence to the operations and professional practice of the council.
He urged all the stakeholders in curriculum development to ensure robust interactions that would provide content that would stand the test of time.
Earlier, declaring the workshop open, the ES of the NBTE, Prof. Idris Bugaje, restated the board’s commitment to ensuring skilled graduates, developed communities, and the nation at large.
Bugaje, represented by his special assistant, Prof. Diyauddeen Hassan, said curriculum development was part of the board’s matrix for addressing skills gaps at the national and international level.
Also, the Registrar of the EHCON, Dr. Yakubu Baba, said the council had set out to rebrand the environmental health profession to make it in line with that of the 21st century.
Baba, represented by his Deputy, Dr Isah Adamu, explained that the council wanted to make the environmental health profession to be in the private sector, however being an only government recognised entity.
“We want to also be in the private sector, so that environmental health professionals who are licensed, will now be able to practise the profession outside public domain.
“Without skills, one may not be able to practise effectively in the private sector and that is why the skills of graduates of the HND environmental health technology is meant to be upscaled,” he said.
Baba urged the participants to effectively render their service not only to the environment health profession, but to the service of Nigeria and Nigerians at large.
“We cannot grow as a nation until we have a better health outcome, which doesn’t come easily if we don’t take care of the environmental health sphere, which has been the bane of Nigeria’s health outcome.” (NAN)
