The Kwara Government on Wednesday said it stopped degree programmes in the state's Colleges of Education because the institutions were losing focus on the purpose for their establishment.

Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed-Lade, the state Commissioner for Tertiary Institutions, stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ilorin.

NAN recalls that the state government had at the beginning of the 2012/2013 academic session stopped the three state Colleges of Education from admitting students into their Sandwich and Regular Degree Programmes.

The commissioner, who admitted that it was not in the interest of the state to stop the programmes, observed that the institutions had derailed from the purposes for which they were established.

"Actually, it is not in the interest of the state to cancel the degree programmes more especially the Sandwich programme in our Colleges of Education.

"But in this situation, you are given a specific assignment and in the process you are abandoning the assignment, the responsibility, and getting into another area where you are not supposed to at the expense of the people you are to serve.

"That actually informed the stoppage of the degree awarding programme and Sandwich courses at the Colleges of Education," he said.

Mohammed-Lade said the institutions had forgotten that they were "established to produce teachers for basic schools; that is primary and junior secondary schools."

"A situation where a College of Education gets involved in degree programmes, thereby abandoning the responsibility for which it was established becomes a problem for the state.

"The state actually felt and the government felt enough is enough. As for the NCE holders produced, a lot of them cannot even defend their certificates. My brother, is that not a disgrace," the commissioner added.

" On no account should Colleges of Education have anything to do with degree programmes because they were basically established to award Nigerian Certificate in Education (NCE)," He added.

Mohammed-Lade said such a situation was a bastardisation of the system because there was no way graduates under such a programme would be as sound as the ones produced in universities.