Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards
The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria, COREN, was established by Decree 55 of 1970 and 27 of 1992 (amendment), now the Engineers (Registration, etc) Act CAP E 11, 2004 to regulate and control the practice of Engineering in Nigeria in all its aspects and ramifications.
The mandate of COREN therefore includes:
Accreditation of Engineering Programmes;
Registration of Engineering Personnel;
Regulation and Control of Engineering Practice.
The law empowers COREN to carry out Accreditation of Engineering Programmes in Universities, Polytechnics and Technical Colleges.
Section (1) (b) of Decree 55 of 1970 and 27 of 1992 (amendment), now the Engineers (Registration, etc) Act CAP E 11, 2004, empowers COREN to:
“Determine what standards of knowledge and skill are to be attained by persons seeking to become registered as engineering personnel and to raise those standards from time to time as circumstances may permit. For this purpose, the Act provides that COREN shall conduct visitation to Engineering Institutions in Nigeria or elsewhere for the purpose of: Accrediting their courses (sections 7 and 8 of the Decrees); Withdrawing any previous approvals, if so warranted and as prescribed in sub-sections (3) – (5) of section 7”.
Similarly, Section 9 Sub-section 6 of the Act provides:
“An educational institution for the training of persons in the Engineering profession shall submit a syllabus of its programme, content and minimum facilities to the Council for approval before a course approved by the National Universities Commission or the National Board for Technical Education is commenced”.
It is in compliance with this that the Council developed the Guidelines for Accreditation of Engineering Programmes. However, after years of use, it became obvious that the Guidelines needed to be reviewed and upgraded to develop the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) for Undergraduate Programmes in Engineering. It also became imperative from observations of various stakeholders that the Accreditation Scoring Criteria needed to be reviewed so as to strengthen the process.
The Council then put together various practitioners of Engineering from the Industry and Academia to hold a workshop on 10th and 11th May 2013 in Abuja, Nigeria, to develop the BMAS and the new Accreditation Scoring Criteria.
The participants at the Workshop included the President and members of Council of COREN, Deans and Heads of Engineering departments in Nigerian Universities, Senior Engineers in the Industry, Past Registrars of COREN, among others. At the end of the two – day exercise, the BMAS for 18 (eighteen) Engineering Programmes were developed and new Accreditation Scoring Criteria were established. See Appendix I for the list of participants at the workshop.
These will, however, continue to be reviewed as the need arises. It is hoped that this painstakingly developed document will form the basis upon which to maintain the standards and evaluation of the Engineering Programmes in Nigerian Universities.
It is hereby acknowledged that the National Universities Commission (NUC) Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards for Engineering and Technology programmes was found to be very useful in developing this document. This was done so that the efforts of COREN and NUC will complement each other and this will minimize incidences of divergence in results of accreditation exercise by COREN and NUC.
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