… It’s a lie, Institution replies
By Prince Osuagwu
A Nigerian student Mr Adebola Aremu is having frustrations in his ICT carrier pursuit which he hoped to kick-start with a DNIIT certificate from a Nigeria based Indian IT training institution, NIIT.

Aremu saw his dream future in ICT propelled in 2009 with an advertisement that a reputable IT training institution was offering scholarship to Nigerian youths willing to pursue a career in IT. He wasted no time but applied.

But that experience was to cost him over half a million Naira which he is paying on installments.
However, his frustrations was not that his father, an average income earner, was going through thick and skin to fulfil the installment payment obligations but that the hands-on tools NIIT is providing to hone his carrier was going to set him further backwards and make him inferior to his peers in other parts of the world.
Aremu’s aspirations is to match the knowledge, skills and competence of ICT whiz-kids in the global information super highway but he is troubled that the curriculum NIIT was running in Nigeria was far behind, outdated and could not give anybody that competitive edge.

According to him, he has taken his case to the school authority who allegedly resorted to threats and bluffed him. He has also consulted a Lawyer who allegedly notified the institution that it was taking the rights of the students for a ride and the school authority could not bulge.

However when Hi-Tech visited the institution’s Ikeja Headquarters, the Chief Operating Officer, Mr Sudip M, denied that his institution was running expired curriculum. He noted that NIIT is a global leader in IT education and training and could not have used faced out curriculum without detection, over the long period it has played in Nigeria, training IT students who have become pillars and beacons of Information and Communications Technology in many reputable organisations today.

He admitted that Aremu was a student of the institution but added that he lacked the patience and mannerisms of a student . According to him, the young man enrolled to do a DNIIT which is a Diploma course in IT but has only done three out of the eight quarters required of him to graduate and so could not have crossed the basics of the course, let alone faulting the curriculum.

Sudip also noted that Aremu had taken his case to the Ministry of Education which has come to evaluate the institution’s curriculum, promising to make its findings known before the week runs out. He added that the institution was not bothered with what the allegations of just one students when he fellow course mates have testified even in writing that they were satisfied with the learning structures in the institution.

Meanwhile, when Aremu sauntered into Vanguard premises at the weekend, he looked much like a troubled soul whose aspirations are likely to be eroded.
He opened up on his frustrations and this is his case:

“I started my course DNIIT at NIIT Gbagada Branch in February 2009, thinking all what I was told by NIIT representative at the Branch that if I enroll for the course I will be fully equipped in IT skills and industrially ready, was true. It’s close to two (2) years now and I have come to find out that everything we are being taught here in NIIT Nigeria is outdated. For instance,

* The windows operation system we are been taught is Windows 2000, whereas after windows 2000 there is Windows XP 2003, Windows XP 2005, Windows Vista, Windows 7.

* The SQL which we where been taught is Microsoft SQL server 2000, whereas we have Microsoft SQL server 2005, Microsoft SQL server 2008.

* Microsoft office which we were been taught is Microsoft Office 2002, whereas we have Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office 2010

* The Microsoft Internet Explorer which our books are featuring is Microsoft Internet explorer 5.0 which is not a tab Browser, so some Java Script codes and other related technologies which we are been taught in the book given to us, don’t work with today’s version of Internet Explorer which uses tab Browser, whereas we have Microsoft Internet explorer 6.0, Microsoft Internet explorer 7.0, Microsoft Internet explorer 8.0. among others.

“I tried several times to resolve the matter with our Center Head, since the beginning of my course when we have just paid a bit of our school fees because most of us pay in installments, but we were told that we are moving from lower version to the higher version. After paying almost all the fees, NIIT Nigeria is now telling us that we should pay extra money so that we can be certified in newer version of parts in our course which we have already paid for.

I believe its rip-off for us here in Nigeria paying N 550,500 close to $4000 to be taught Faced Out Curriculum and in India where they pay less than $1000 for same course they are taught with updated curriculum.

“I have evidence of conversations between me and two NIIT student in India and a E-mail message sent to me from NIIT Ghana all showing that NIIT is using updated curriculum in those places and my father’s lawyer had written to them attaching those evidences yet no changes are coming from NIIT”.