ENHANCING LEGISLATIVE COMMITMENTS AND REFORMS IN TECHNICAL VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING (TVET) IN THE NORTHEAST ZONE OF NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
In the northeast geopolitical zone, the various civil uprisings and political unrest witnessed in the recent times seem to raise a lot of questions about commitment to technical vocational education and training in the zone. There are cases of ethno-religious riots as well as almajiris who are youths and children that engage in alms begging in the zone. The study adopted a descriptive research design aimed at examining how to enhance the commitment of legislatures in the northeast states Houses of Assembly to Technical and Vocational Education and Training reforms. To achieve objectives of the study, five research questions and five null hypotheses were formulated. The population of the study was 176 which consists of 158 legislators in the six States House of Assembly in the Northeast geopolitical zone of Nigeria, six clerks in each of all the States House of Assembly and 12 ministry officials. The sample for the study was 109 respondents. Proportionate sampling techniques was used to select 91 legislators for the study, all the six clerks and 12 ministry officials were selected for the study. Questionnaire, interview schedule and content analysis of vital documents were the instrument used for data collection. The questionnaire consists of 37 items developed from reviewed literature. The instrument was face validated by two experts who are professionals in the area of rTVET, one official in the Department of Science and Technical Education of Enugu state Ministry of Education and two legislators from Anambra State House of Assembly. Data was collected by trained assistants. Data collected was analyzed using mean, while t-test for independent sample and Analysis of Variant (ANOVA) were used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made: (a) Legislators should give priority attention to Bills on TVET issues. (b) Legislators should sponsor Bills that will favour TVET for economic development of the nation. (c) Officials of Science and Technology units should call for increased funding of TVET. (d) A bill encouraging people to study TVET courses should be put in place.