A directive was given in 2004 by the Federal Ministry of Education that federally-owned tertiary institutions should hands off hostel management. Consequent on the directive, Nigerian tertiary institutions now have both institutional and non-institutional hostels serving tertiary institutions. This no doubt has a lot of implications on the nature of management and maintenance of hostels in Nigeria.This paper assessed maintenance management strategies adopted in the maintenance of hostel buildings in Nigeria and formulated guidelines for the maintenance of the hostels using the field data collected from the Federal Polytechnic Oko for the case-study. In order to achieve the objective of the study, opinions of hostellers, school management, maintenance heads and private developers were sampled through structured questionnaires. The data collected were quantitatively analysed and the result of the analysis indicated the following as the problems of maintenance; non-availability of funds, indiscipline and lack of functional operational frame work and regulatory body, climatic conditions, lack of good maintenance culture, lack of skilled maintenance personnel, use of foreign building materials and unethical behaviours as some of the key factors responsible for poor maintenance work and management of hostels in tertiary institutions. Effective strategies that should include a stipulated guide overseen by a body of professionals to enforce maintenance in hostels to avoid complacency, the adoption of a maintenance manual to be strictly monitored and the use of a computerised management system that will ensure proper maintenance records were recommended.
Keywords: Maintenance Management, Nigeria, Strategies., Tertiary Institutions, computerised maintenance management system, hostel buildings
