The paper ceiling: Why HND/BSc dichotomy Is Nigeria’s most enduring injustice

By Gabriel Adisa

Nigeria has abolished the HND/BSc dichotomy several times; the problem is that the dichotomy has refused to die.

For more than a decade, successive Federal Government pronouncements, circulars and policy decisions have declared that Higher National Diploma holders should no longer suffer discrimination in entry, remuneration and career progression. Yet, in practice, the paper qualification still determines how far an HND holder can rise in the public service.

That is the real injustice; Nigeria has a policy of equality on paper and a system of inequality in practice.

An HND holder can enter the civil service, perform the same duties as a university graduate, supervise graduates, train younger officers and accumulate decades of experience, yet encounter a career ceiling that his BSc counterpart does not face. At the point where experience and performance should increasingly matter, the certificate on the officer’s file can become the deciding factor.

This is why the HND/BSc dichotomy is no longer simply an argument about two qualifications. It is an argument about equal opportunity in public employment. If two officers perform substantially the same work, meet the requirements of their positions and accumulate comparable experience, a qualification obtained at the beginning of their careers should not automatically determine who can progress and who cannot.

The tragedy, therefore, is not that the Federal Government has failed to recognise the problem. It has recognised it repeatedly. The tragedy is that successive declarations have not translated into consistent implementation.

In 2016, the then Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, on behalf of the Federal Government, announced the abolition of the dichotomy. The minister stated that the government had resolved that HND and BSc holders should enjoy the same remuneration, progression and benefits.

In October 2017, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs Winifred Oyo-Ita, while speaking on Radio Nigeria, confirmed that “the age-long disparity between holders of BSc and HND has now been abolished by the Federal Government.” She noted that the decision was taken at the National Council on Establishment meeting in Minna, Niger State, and that both HND and BSc graduates would have the same entry point and retirement period.

On March 26, 2018, the Oyo-Ita circular conveyed the decision of the National Council on Establishment to Ministries, Departments and Agencies. The circular indicated that the NCE approved an entry point of SGL 08 for HND holders in the civil service. It also provided for serving HND officers to fulfil specified conditions for career progression beyond SGL 14.

Also in 2018, the Ministry of Interior issued a directive aimed at ending the dichotomy and regularising salaries in the paramilitary services. The Civil Defence, Fire, Immigration and Prisons Board directed that officers with HND qualifications be upgraded to COMPASS 08, the salary grade level for degree holders at entry point.

Then, in February 2026, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, declared at a retreat of rectors and governing council chairmen in Abuja that the government planned to scrap the dichotomy as part of a policy shift aimed at restoring the dignity of polytechnic education. “This is about building a workforce that can create, build and solve real world problems,” he said.

The pattern is now difficult to ignore; the problem has not been a shortage of government declarations but a failure to convert those declarations into uniform, enforceable practice.

Five declarations and years of policy pronouncements have not removed the career ceiling confronting many HND holders. In some cases, an HND officer seeking progression beyond GL 14 is still required to obtain a Postgraduate Diploma or undertake a top up programme, creating an additional hurdle that does not apply in the same way to BSc holders.

That is where the real policy question lies. If the government has decided that HND and BSc holders should not be discriminated against in career progression, why should one category have to acquire another qualification before accessing a progression pathway available to the other?

The first obstacle is therefore implementation. The bureaucracy has often attached conditions to the abolition of the dichotomy, including requirements for further qualifications and compliance with “extant rules.” Such conditions can effectively preserve the very distinction the policy was intended to remove.

The second obstacle is the gap between federal policy and state practice. A federal circular cannot automatically guarantee equal treatment across all state civil services. Where states fail to domesticate or implement the policy, HND holders continue to experience a different reality from what federal pronouncements suggest.

The third issue is institutional resistance. Changes to qualification structures affect established career pathways, professional classifications and administrative practices. Any attempt to remove the dichotomy therefore requires more than another announcement; it requires clear rules, implementation deadlines and mechanisms for enforcement.

The experiences of affected officers illustrate the human cost of this policy gap.

Mr S.A., a Chief Technologist with an HND in Electrical Engineering, Upper Credit, 2009, at a federal ministry in Abuja, says: “I have 15 years of service. I train BSc graduates who join after me. Last year, my junior with a BSc was promoted to Assistant Director on GL 15. I was told to go and bring PGD first. We do the same work. I even do more practical work. But my file is marked differently.”

Mrs K.O., an HND holder in Accountancy working in the Oyo State civil service, says: “In our state, they didn’t even implement the GL 08 entry. We still start at GL 07. When we complain, they say ‘Abuja talk is different from state.’ Are we not Nigerians?”

The central question is therefore straightforward; what is the value of abolishing a discrimination in policy if the discrimination remains embedded in the system that implements the policy?

If the government is serious about ending the dichotomy, the next phase should not be another declaration. It should be implementation.

The Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation should issue a binding and non conditional circular removing the PGD condition and set a six month compliance deadline for all MDAs and states, with appropriate sanctions for non compliance.

The National Council on Establishment should formally amend the Scheme of Service to place HND and BSc holders on GL 08 at entry and GL 17 as the terminal point, where the relevant service structure permits, without discrimination based solely on the type of tertiary institution attended.

The National Assembly should pass the long pending Bill for an Act to Abolish the Dichotomy into law, providing a statutory framework that cannot be weakened through administrative delay.

As proposed by Dr Alausa, polytechnics should also be allowed to award Bachelor of Technology, B.Tech, degrees. Such a reform could address one of the structural differences that continues to fuel the distinction between university and polytechnic qualifications.

As suggested by the Nigerian Association of Technologists in Engineering (NATE) in 2018, monitoring groups should be established at federal and state levels to track implementation and ensure that approved policies are translated into actual career opportunities.

Nigeria cannot consistently promote technical and vocational education while allowing the qualification earned in its polytechnics to become a career disadvantage in the public service.

The HND/BSc debate should therefore move beyond another promise to abolish the dichotomy. The real test is whether an HND holder who meets the requirements of a position, performs effectively and gains the necessary experience can progress without being forced to acquire a second qualification simply because the first one came from a polytechnic.

The dichotomy has been abolished on paper. What Nigeria needs now is to abolish it in practice.

… Adisa is a journalist and public relations practitioner. and could be reached on: 0806 005 2397

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