A retired professor of Psychology, and Chairman Governing Council, Kwara state Polytechnic, Ilorin Professor Sheu Jimoh has attributed the retrogression in the Nigeria's educational sector to what he called regime based policies of the federal government.

Jimoh, a former university teacher at the University of Ilorin, spoke at a one day workshop on strategic planning for the heads of departments and units of the state polytechnic organised by the department of works in conjunction with the institution's Centre for Consultancy Services held at the polytechnic.

He said lack of a long term development plan and inconsistency in educational policies by successive regimes in the country had cost the education sector a lot of setbacks.

"One of the problems with our education is lack of strategic planning. We hardly plan for the future. We drift into the future. If we don't plan for the future, we would continue to have one step forward, two steps backward.

"If we don't know where we are going, we cannot assess how far we have travelled. Regime based arrangement programmes are actually not policies, they cannot move us forward, they cannot move an institution, state or a country forward", he said.

He recalled that policies of previous Nigerian governments have fizzled out because "they were based on the person in power and not a strategic planning".

Jimoh challenged members of staff of the polytechnic to help the institution and the state by devising a long-term strategic planning to move the institution forward.

The Rector of the Polytechnic, Alhaji Mas'ud Elelu said the strategic planning workshop was the outcome of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETfund) conference where institutions were mandated to develop a five-year strategic planning to continuously access the institutional intervention funds.

He challenged staff of the institution to assist the polytechnic in developing "a very good strategic planning that will outlive us".