Speaking with journalists in Ilorin ,at the weekend, the Rector noted that the institution had not been on strike due to openness and prioritisation, adding that salaries are paid regularly.

“There has to be give and take. Both parties must give and take”, the rector said, adding that prioritisation had helped the institution.

“Knowing what are your challenges, one is prioritisation, openness, blocking leakages, those are the things that affect us here.

“Openness in the sense that everybody knows what is coming in, everybody knows how much what the government is giving us as subvention, they know how much is our salary and they know how much we are collecting as Internal Generated Revenue (IGR).”

Elelu also called for involvement of every stakeholder in the development and design of curriculum to make it relevant to the needs of the community.

“We need what we call ed cooperative education to ensure that the community takes part in developing, designing curriculum that our students are going to go through.

Everybody must be involved. There must be cooperative synergy. Once there is synergy among all stakeholders, then, we would be able to come up with a plan which we follow for some years and it can be reviewed as we go along.

“Here in Kwara polytechnic, we have the NBTE curriculum for every programme. But two years ago ,we added to the curriculum, we set up a committee headed by Deputy Rector. We looked at each curriculum given to us which is the minimum by the NBTE.

“We now added certain thing that we think would be necessary for the community where we are so that when that student comes out, he becomes relevant to his community.

So, we need cooperative education where all stakeholders come together, develop curricula and the principles of what and what are we supposed to follow. That would bring us out.

“And when we are talking of cooperative education, it is not only for students but staff also. What staff do we need? How do we train them? What kind of staff do we employ? What should polytechnic be for?

“Again in our plan we must be able to introduce hands-on. Vocational training for the development of the country must be in the plan irrespective of whatever you are doing.

That is why I want to acknowledge what the state government is doing at International Vocation Centre at Ajasse Ipo. Incidentally I am a member.