The Association of Provosts of Colleges of Health Technology and Nursing Sciences has called on the Federal Government to exempt health institutions from the recently announced seven-year ban on the establishment of new polytechnics and allied institutions.
The appeal was contained in a communique issued at the end of the association’s 2025 Quadrennial Conference in Abuja and made available to journalists on Thursday in Lokoja by its Public Relations Officer, Dr. Nuhu Anyegwu.
The Federal Government had recently suspended the issuance of licenses for new public and private tertiary institutions for the next seven years. However, the provosts argued that including health training institutions in the ban would worsen Nigeria’s healthcare manpower crisis.
“The ban will create an intergenerational gap of at least seven years in terms of shortage of health and medical manpower in various communities in Nigeria,” the association warned.
The provosts maintained that Colleges of Health Technology and Nursing Sciences should not be classified as allied institutions, stressing that they are already subject to approval and accreditation by professional health and medical councils or boards. They urged the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to exempt the colleges from the policy.
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The conference also raised concern over the exclusion of health colleges from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) schedule and urged support for the ongoing amendment bill to include them in TETFUND funding.
In addition, the provosts commended NBTE for digitalising accreditation processes, re-elected Dr. Johnson Ojo and Adamu Ahmadu as chairman and secretary-general, respectively, and resolved to launch a journal to support health research publications.
With Nigeria’s population exceeding 200 million, the association stressed that boosting the training of health professionals was essential to meeting the nation’s healthcare needs and averting future manpower shortages.