The board disclosed this in a statement made available to newsmen in Abuja on Monday by its Head of Media Unit, Mrs Fatima Abubakar.

Abubakar said this was also to facilitate the progression of HND holders to higher degrees.

Here is a step-by-step guides for HND holders to convert their certificates to a BSc certificate through the NBTE’s one-year programme below:

1. You must own a HND certificate in one of the recognised and approved polytechnics and monotechnics.

2. Visit the admission portal https://admission.topup.nbte.gov.ng and log in if you have already created an account.

3. Supply all your details in relation to your HND which you already have.

4. After creating the account you can move ahead to submission of a new application.

5. The university’s programs chosen should align with the technical and vocational fields covered by NBTE.

6. After selecting a course of your choice, you will get the option to select which institute you want to study at and there you can see their program fees followed by a button to even view details about the institute on their institutional profile page.

7. After submitting the form you will see the application status under the ‘my applications’ tab and you can go ahead with the submission of the form fees (USD 100) to enable the university to start processing your admission.

8. You can further go to the payments tab to download your fees receipt for the application form fee payment.

9. After the university has approved your admission, then you can go to my application and download your admission letter.

The National Board for Technical Education conveyed the government’s decision to heads of the affected institutions in a circular marked TEB/PRO/E/12/Vol.11/132 dated December 1, 2022.

A copy of the document signed by the board’s Director, Polytechnic Programmes Department, Ogoh Ngbede, was obtained by our correspondent on Tuesday.

Ngbede, in the circular, expressed the Federal Ministry of Education’s dismay at the increasing number of tertiary institutions in the country offering programmes for which they were not originally designed.

He however said the government has given the affected institutions four years to graduate the last set of students already admitted for such programmes.

The circular read in part, “Polytechnics and other technical institutions in the country should immediately stop admitting students into degree programmes.

“Similarly, polytechnics and allied institutions awarding Nigerian Certificate in Education should restrict themselves to technical courses.

However, already admitted undergraduates for these programmes should be allowed to round up the programmes into which they are already admitted.

“Institutions have been given a period of four years (up to 2026) to graduate their last set of students for such programmes.”

The PUNCH reports that the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics has over time called on the government to allow polytechnics to award degrees.

The union’s National President, Anderson Ezeibe, noted that the award of degrees by polytechnics would end the current dichotomy.

He said, “HND is no longer as attractive as it used to be to Nigerian youths because of the age-long dichotomy.

“Policymakers have made it a rule that once an individual has an HND, he cannot attain the peak of his/her career, then why are they continuing to force it on people, why don’t they phase it out and replace it with Bachelor of Technology?”

According to him, the Nigerian polytechnic system has all it takes in terms of infrastructure and human capital to award Bachelor, Master’s and Doctorate degrees in the area of technology.

When contacted on Tuesday for his reaction to the development,

Ezeibe promised to get back to our correspondent later in the evening.

He has yet to do so as of the time of filing this report.

Meanwhile, the Director of Programmes, Reform Education Nigeria, Ayodamola Oluwatoyin, in an interview with our correspondent on Tuesday, backed the government’s decision.

She said, “It is a very good initiative. Universities and polytechnics exist for different reasons. While it is largely believed that universities focus on theories, polytechnics focus on practical ones. So why should one want to take over the duty of another?

“However, it is worthy of note to remind the government about to promise to eliminate the dichotomy between degrees and Higher National Diplomas. We need to understand that the two awards serve different purposes hence, one should not be seen as lower than the other.”