COREN President, Prof. Sadiq Abubakar, made this known on Wednesday at a news conference on the 32nd COREN Engineering Assembly scheduled to hold on Aug.5th to 7th in Abuja.

Abubakar said that the move for the compulsory residency was aimed at strengthening engineering practises in Nigeria as well as making graduates employable.

He said that the COREN was established as a statutory body with the mandate to regulate and control the engineering  education, training and practice of engineering in all its aspects and ramifications.

According to him, COREN carries out its mandate by ensuring quality assurance of training institutions offering engineering through accreditation of engineering programmes in tertiary institutions.

“The National Universities Commission (NUC) and COREN have agreed to commence joint accreditation of engineering programs in universities.

“This is similar the existing practice between National Board for Technical  Education,(NBTE) and COREN for the Polytechnics and Mono-technics.

“In line with the aspiration of COREN to meet the global standards of Sydney Accord (SA) and Dublin Accord (DA) under the IEA, NBTE and COREN have agreed to commence accreditation of technical colleges in Nigeria this coming academic session n response to the goals of the current administration, the Council approved the resuscitation of Supervised Industrial Training Scheme in Engineering (SITSIE) under a new name of Engineering Residency Program (EREP).’’

Abubakar said that the plan is to engage the National Assembly to seek legislative backing for its funding by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) in line with the existing law.

“This is a one-year post-graduation training programme for all engineering graduates of an accredited university or polytechnic.