Concerned by the widening skills gap in Nigeria’s engineering workforce, the regulatory body has proposed a mandatory one-year residency scheme to strengthen the practical competence of graduates before their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) service. The plan, however, has elicited mixed reactions from key stakeholders, VICTOR GBONEGUN reports.

AFTER decades of failed attempts to close the widening skills gap in Nigeria’s engineering workforce, the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) is proposing a mandatory one-year residency scheme for engineering graduates before their National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). The initiative, tagged the Engineering Residency Programme (EREP), aims to strengthen practical competence, align graduate training with industry needs, and restore confidence in Nigerian-trained engineers.

The proposal has generated cautious optimism across the profession. While many stakeholders view it as a potential turning point for engineering practice, others warn that without robust implementation, legislative backing and strong industry collaboration, the scheme could go the way of earlier interventions such as the Supervised Industrial

Training Scheme in Engineering (SITSIE) and the Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES).
While SIWES remains the only window for hands-on experience during undergraduate training, many students complete the programme without acquiring practical skills. After graduation, they join the labour queue with little to differentiate them.

Advocates of the residency scheme believe EREP could help reverse this trend, reposition engineering education and enhance Nigeria’s global competitiveness. However, they caution that success hinges on structure, funding, accountability and political will.

Without these, critics warn, the residency scheme risks becoming another well-intentioned policy undermined by poor execution. With them, it could mark a genuine turning point for engineering practice in Nigeria.

A persistent skills gap

Concerns about the quality and readiness of engineering graduates in Nigeria have lingered for decades. Employers across civil, mechanical, chemical, electrical and electronics, computer and agricultural engineering consistently lament the mismatch between workplace demands and the competencies of fresh graduates.

Nigeria’s engineering education, once celebrated in the 1970s and 1980s for its rigorous blend of theory and practice, has steadily declined. The system has drifted from its practice-oriented roots to an overly theoretical model. Chronic underfunding, obsolete laboratories, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate workshop facilities and a shortage of experienced lecturers have left many graduates ill-prepared for professional practice.

As a result, thousands of engineering graduates enter the labour market every year without the hands-on exposure required to function effectively in industry. During NYSC, many are posted to secondary schools to teach mathematics or physics, rather than deployed to engineering-related organisations. Critics argue that this underutilisation denies young engineers the early-career exposure enjoyed by their counterparts in medicine, law and accounting, who transition directly into internships, housemanship or chambers.

Lessons from failed interventions

Efforts to bridge the skills gap are not new. The SIWES and SITSIE programmes were designed to expose students to real-life engineering practice during their undergraduate years. However, both schemes have been undermined by poor implementation, weak supervision, limited placement opportunities, logistical challenges and chronic underfunding.

A recent study published in the Journal of Advanced Engineering Technology and Sciences found that more than 70 per cent of engineering graduates in Nigeria lack the practical skills required by modern industries. According to the study, many students return from industrial attachments without meaningful exposure, often because they were placed in organisations unrelated to their field of study or left unsupervised throughout the training period.

Against this backdrop, COREN believes the proposed residency scheme could offer a more structured and accountable pathway to skills development, provided it avoids the pitfalls that crippled earlier initiatives.

What the residency scheme proposes

The Engineering Residency Programme would require engineering graduates to undergo a compulsory one-year, supervised residency in accredited engineering firms or relevant organisations before proceeding to the NYSC. The scheme would require legislative backing and sustainable funding, likely through the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), to function as a national policy.

COREN President, Prof. Sadiq Abubakar, said the council plans to engage the National Assembly to secure the necessary legal framework and funding. According to him, the primary goal of EREP is to bridge the gap between classroom knowledge and real-world engineering application, while aligning Nigerian engineering training with global standards.

Upon completion of the residency, graduates would become eligible for NYSC and COREN professional registration. The council also hopes the residency year, combined with NYSC service, would count as two years of post-graduation experience toward professional certification.

Global comparisons and curriculum debates

In countries such as Canada, engineering programmes integrate extended industry placements directly into the academic curriculum through structured cooperative education. Students alternate between classroom learning and paid industry placements, graduating with substantial practical experience.

By contrast, Nigerian universities typically offer brief industrial attachments that are poorly monitored and weakly enforced. Some academics argue that the residency scheme might be more effective if integrated into the degree programme, even if it extends study duration to six years.

According to one senior academic, embedding structured residency within undergraduate training would ensure better oversight and prevent graduates from falling into a placement vacuum after graduation. Others, however, argue that a post-graduation residency allows for more focused professional exposure without disrupting academic calendars.

Support from industry veterans

Former President of the Nigerian Institution of Structural Engineers, Dr Victor Oyenuga, welcomed the proposal, describing it as a long-overdue step toward restoring professional standards. He said the scheme would better prepare graduates for industry demands and enhance their value to both public and private sector employers.

Under the current COREN framework, engineering graduates require four years of post-NYSC experience before qualifying for professional examinations. Oyenuga explained that with the new arrangement, the residency year and

NYSC would count as two years, enabling graduates to become fully certified engineers within four years of graduation.

However, he raised concerns about placement capacity. Many engineering firms, he noted, are struggling due to limited patronage and the concentration of major consulting contracts among a few politically connected firms.

“Most engineering consulting firms are not patronised. If these firms are not active, how will graduates gain meaningful experience? Engineering should not be politicised. Consulting must be based on competence, not political connections,” he said.

Oyenuga also decried the declining quality of graduates, blaming weak curricula, lack of mentorship and poor academic culture. He lamented what he described as a loss of discipline in classrooms and declining lecturer commitment, warning that without addressing these root issues, no residency scheme would succeed.

Young engineers’ scepticism

Among younger professionals, optimism is tempered by scepticism. A Lagos-based electrical engineer, John Ikechukwu, expressed doubts about how the residency programme would be implemented, recalling his own struggles to secure a relevant NYSC placement.

“Most engineering firms were already filled. Ironically, some of the people occupying those slots were not engineers. It’s all about who you know,” he said, adding that he eventually worked in a mechanical engineering firm despite his electrical background.

According to Ikechukwu, some families resort to setting up fictitious engineering companies to secure NYSC placements for their children, while others push graduates into early entrepreneurship, such as solar installation or tech services, even before completing formal training.

He acknowledged that a well-structured residency scheme could change this narrative, especially if firms are incentivised to retain competent residents after the programme, easing the transition into full employment.

Gender and sectoral gaps

Immediate past President of the Association of Professional Women Engineers of Nigeria (APWEN), Dr Elizabeth Eterigho, also described the residency idea as promising but stressed that several structural challenges must be addressed.
She cited the lack of functional laboratories and tools in many federal institutions, weak industry linkages, and limited placement opportunities for students outside civil engineering.

While construction offers relatively more opportunities, she noted that students in chemical, electrical, electronics and agricultural engineering often struggle to find relevant placements.

“Civil engineering students are more likely to find opportunities because of construction. What about others? Many students go for industrial attachment in places where they can’t practise their field,” she said.

Eterigho added that COREN’s directive discouraging the deployment of engineering graduates as teachers during NYSC has been difficult to enforce due to the sheer volume of graduates and limited placement capacity.
“NYSC used to have three batches. Now each batch has two streams, and there is even talk of introducing a Batch D.

How will the system accommodate these graduates in relevant firms?” she asked.

The need for a national framework

To succeed, stakeholders argue that the residency scheme must be anchored on strong academia-industry collaboration.

Eterigho proposed that COREN work closely with manufacturing firms, technology companies, oil and gas operators and construction giants to create structured residency placements nationwide.

Drawing parallels with the medical profession, she said engineering could adopt a similar internship model, with placements coordinated centrally rather than left to individual graduates to source on their own. “There has to be a national framework, possibly with zonal placement centres. Students cannot find these placements themselves,” she said.

She also stressed the need for guaranteed alignment between residents’ placements and their areas of specialisation, warning that mismatched postings would defeat the purpose of the scheme.