COREN Sends warning to UNICAL and Adamawa Varsity, threatens to ‘Blacklist’ Engineering Courses

In a press release after its 181st ordinary council meeting made available in Abuja yesterday, the council reminded the institutions that one of its mandates is to ensure quality assurance of engineering training institutions, firms and operators.

The resolution signed by the Registrar of COREN, Prof. Adisa Bello, stressed that this is carried out through the accreditation of engineering programmes in Nigerian universities, polytechnics, monotechnics and technical colleges.

In compliance with the provisions of the Act, Section 1(1), it stated that it was part of determining who an engineering practitioner is, what standards of knowledge and skill are to be attained as well as establishment and maintenance of the registers of persons entitled to practice.

COREN recalled that at the end of its 179th ordinary council meeting, it had enlightened the general public about the accreditation status of institutions running engineering programmes without approval from COREN and others with failed accreditation.

Consequently, it pointed out that some of the institutions rectified their accreditation anomalies and are now running approved engineering programmes.

“However, the under listed universities have been written officially to call for accreditation of their programmes as presently their programmes are illegal and they need to rectify the abnormalities but there has not been any positive response from any of them,” It stated.

COREN listed them as Modibbo Adama University Yola, Adamawa State, which its agricultural engineering programme failed accreditation, explaining that the accreditation for the school’s civil engineering, elect/elect engineering, chemical engineering as well as mechanical engineering programmes expired in 2020 and 2021.

As for UNICAL, COREN revealed that the institution is currently running engineering programmes up to 300 level without resource verification/pre-accreditation by COREN.

In accordance with section 12 of the Federal Government Gazette No.113 of March 3, 2023, it stated that in the case of violation of any provision, COREN shall enforce the withdrawal of accreditation or non-recognition of graduates of such programmes for registration as engineering practitioners or both.

“The general public is also being notified that: COREN is hereby notifying the affected universities to rectify the abnormalities and get the programmes accredited before the commencement of the next academic session.

“Failure to rectify their non-accreditation status will result in blacklisting them as non-accredited institutions whose graduates of engineering programmes will not be recognised for registration as engineering practitioners and will lack the legal backing to practice engineering in Nigeria.

“Engineering practitioners are hereby reminded to obtain their Annual Practicing License (APL) for 2024 in order to comply with the law regulating engineering practice in Nigeria,” it added.

It further stated that council approved the establishment of an Engineering Intelligence, Surveillance and Enforcement (EISE) Task Force in the six geopolitical regions and Lagos state.

Functions of the EISE, it said, involve establishing policy for selecting and engaging persons for intelligence information gathering and whistle blowing as well as generating intelligence information on the establishment and operations of engineering practitioners.

Among others, they will be involved in the development and standardisation of checklist for monitoring and enforcement of engineering regulations, screening and validation of available information, strategies for mobilisation and empowerment of the EISE task force for effective operation.

Council also approved the creation of a regional steering committee in each region to serve as a coordinating body tasked with harmonising the efforts and initiatives of regional and state offices of COREN