NAN-AE-2
Qualifications
By Kudirat Musa
Abuja, Oct. 25, 2017 (NAN) Prof. Ambrose Voh, the Acting Executive Secretary, Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN), has advised the council’s staff to obtain additional qualifications to enhance their capacity to provide quality service delivery.
Voh gave the advice on Wednesday in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja.
“The council regulates, coordinates and supervises the activities of the research institutes, colleges of agriculture and university-based research institutes, in which some of their staff are professors, Ph.d and Master’s degree holders.
“It is not possible for B.Sc degree holders to supervise, coordinate and regulate the activities of that calibre of workers; the council staff must, therefore, be equipped and up to standard before he or she can be promoted to the next level.
“The issue of promotion is very straightforward because we have requirements for promotion; if you are going to a certain level, that position may require you to have a Master’s degree or Ph.d.
“If you know you do not have it, even for your own assessment, you should know that you are not likely to be promoted because you cannot meet up with the requirements,’’ he said.
Voh said that that the Governing Board approved the guidelines and requirements for staff promotion, in consonance with the Act that established the council.
He said that the council was undergoing some reform so as to strengthen it for efficient service delivery.
“The part of the requirement is to make sure that we have a solid human resource development programme because if we are going to supervise, coordinate and regulate the institutes under us, we must be above the people we are going to regulate or supervise.
“As part of efforts to enable the staff to acquire the needed qualifications, the council gives waivers and a window of about six years for its employees to go to school on sponsorship.
“We have some statistics on the effectiveness of the policy; many workers, including married women, have taken the due advantage of that window to improve themselves; they acquired Master’s or Ph.d degrees and came back to work.
“Some workers, however, refused to utilise the opportunity to improve themselves and whenever they get to certain stages, they would remain stagnant,’’ he added.
Voh said that those workers who failed to have additional qualifications were the masterminds of the workers’ demonstration at the headquarters of the agency between Oct. 13 and Oct. 20.
He reiterated that the actions of the management on staff promotion requirements were in accordance with the council’s rules, adding that the window for the acquisition of extra qualifications was still open to the staff.
NAN recalls that Mr Ubi Ikpi, the Secretary, Academic Staff Union of Research Institutions, once criticised the promotion interviews, which the ARCN management conducted on Sept. 27.
Ikpi then said: “The promotion committee led by Dr Celestine Ikuenobe, Director Knowledge Management, were asking the workers questions that were not relevant to the promotion exercise.
“The members of staff became angry about the development and this eventually led to their protest.
“Ikuenobe said that the workers needed additional qualifications to enable them to qualify for promotion but this is not tenable in the council.
“We are not a research organisation; we do not have research focus and there is a circular to that effect from the Head of Service in 2015; we are to supervise, regulate and coordinate the institutes under us.’’(NAN)
ROK/MOL/OOK
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Edited by Mustapha Lamidi and Dayo Komolafe