...Records 485 With Distinctions, 11,080 Others
The Rector of Kogi State Polytechnic, Dr. Usman Ogbo Salisu has disclosed that his motivation to abolish the sale of handouts and textbooks is to ensure students have fresh breath air from the hands of some unscrupulous lecturers.
This is just as the Rector disclosed that 285 students bagged Distinctions and a total of 11,080, comprising 7,653 for ND and 4,427 HND would be graduating in the upper and lower classes and pass certificates, that spanned over ten years, compressed into four combined convocation ceremonies..
The Rector stated this during a press briefing to mark the commencement of activities heralding the convocation ceremony held at the main campus of the Polytechnic in Lokoja.
Dr. Usman noted that on assumption of office, he met an institution comatose with all kinds of atrocities, including cultism, examination malpractices, obnoxious sale of handouts and textbooks low morale of staff and students.
He said he had to face the situation head-on by banning the sales of handouts and textbooks which was a serious burden on the students and their parents with its attendance consequences on quality certificates.
He added that the situation became worrisome when some of the students would go out of their way to use their hard-earned school fees to buy handouts and textbooks to escape the wrath of the lecturers and to improve their marks, stressing that the ban has restored sanity to the academic progress of the institution.
He explained that other debilitating challenges he faced were the audacity of cult organisations and organised examination malpractices that pervaded the institution, hence, he introduced new security measures that kept bursting their activities, arrested culprits and arraigned them for prosecutions.
To restore academic integrity to the institution, the Rector said, he embarked on massive recruitment of qualified lecturers and non-teaching staff, which aided in the full accreditation of all the 30 programmes presented to the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE).
The Rector revealed that the institution which was hitherto regarded as a glorified secondary school with its certificates considered not worthy than the bread wrapper, has with the present management become the toast of students and parents with the upsurge of admission seekers.
While admitting the cooperation of staff and students for the success so far recorded, he noted that both physical structures have received befitting attention with multiple buildings dining length and breadth of the campuses.
He said, “When we came in, we had the challenges of poor academic contents, cultism, ethnic envy and deplorable hostel facilities. We hit the ground running by putting our Artificial and common Intelligence in place with a security architecture that caught perpetrators’ nappings. We made landmark arrests of cultists disturbing the peace of the polytechnic community, bursting coordinated examination malpractices. Today, the polytechnic is free from predatory actors.
“To stop the ominous trends among male and female students cohabiting on and off campus as a result of the poor hostel facilities, we approached the state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello for assistance, and he graciously provided us with a window and today, our hostel is one of the modern hostels across institutions in the country.
We have been able to secure Tetfund interventions and with our stringent monitoring, best quality buildings spread across the campuses of our Polytechnic.” Dr. Ogbo revealed.
Meanwhile, part of the activities, is the convocation lecture, on Friday, with the theme” Providing Food Security, the Role of Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria, to be delivered by one-time Rector of the polytechnic, Professor Joseph Omada Ittah.
