Ghost polytechnic in Bayelsa?

The House of Representatives Committee on Tertiary Education has stopped just short of describing the Federal Polytechnic Ekowe, Bayelsa State as a ghost institution and has threatened to delete it from the 2018 federal budget. Speaking at the National Board for Technical Education [NBTE] office in Kaduna, Chairman of the House Committee Aminu Suleiman expressed […]

The House of Representatives Committee on Tertiary Education has stopped just short of describing the Federal Polytechnic Ekowe, Bayelsa State as a ghost institution and has threatened to delete it from the 2018 federal budget. Speaking at the National Board for Technical Education [NBTE] office in Kaduna, Chairman of the House Committee Aminu Suleiman expressed misgivings over the status of the institution. He said even a graveyard was busier than the place when his committee members made an oversight visit to it. 

The chairman said, “In fact we had to wait for hours before the so-called Rector’s office was cleaned and prepared for the meeting and we had to wait again before some few members of the management appeared to receive us.” He added, “They claimed that the polytechnic has about 110 students and over 1000 staff but there has been no document, report or nominal roll to prove that the so-called staff were properly recruited by the Federal Government.” He then threatened that unless adequate evidence was produced by the institution his Committee would skip it in the recommendation for funding in the 2018 budget. 

The Bayelsa State House of Assembly responded to Suleiman’s threat in a motion entitled ‘The Urgent Need to Reverse the Threat to close down the Federal Polytechnic, Ekowe’ raised by Daniel Igali, member representing Southern Ijaw Constituency 3. BYHA described the threat as “curious, unthinkable and condemnable.” Igali, in whose constituency the Polytechnic is located, said the institution was established to train and develop manpower for the country’s oil and gas industry and has over the years produced scores of graduates at National Diploma [ND] and Higher National Diploma [HND] levels who he said are proving their mettle in the industry both in the country and beyond. He said Suleiman’s comment was based on an oversight mission which the committee carried out in November 2016, which makes it a belated argument for judging the institution in 2017. Hot on the heels of the Bayelsa State Assembly motion, the Ijaw Youth Council [IYC Worldwide] also condemned the threat by Suleiman. It threatened in a statement that any attempt to deny the institution of its legitimate dues with respect to allocation of funds in the 2018 budget will be resisted. 

Nevertheless, the report of the status of the institution as was raised by the House of Representatives Committee qualifies for more than a passing attention as it raises many questions on the actual state of affairs at the Federal Polytechnic Ekowe, Bayelsa State. Protests by Bayelsa Assembly and IYC aside, Nigerians must know for sure of indeed this institution exists. For instance the Suleiman Committee has indicted the institution over the absence of basic administrative records such as nominal rolls of staff and students.  Do such actually exist and if so, why were they not presented to the Committee during the oversight visit? The Bayelsa stakeholders ought to be more concerned with the veracity of the committee’s findings that rushing to the defence of a school that is alleged to be a ghost institution. 

The Federal Polytechnic, Ekowe was established in line with the extant provisions for operating as a higher institution in the country. The terrain in which it is situated is very difficult and it is accessible only by river craft. In that context, the Suleiman Committee should be sympathetic to the institution and accord to it more funding than usual to overcome its difficult circumstances. Before that can be done however, it must be established for certain that the institution is not a ghost. Since it is many years old it has been receiving annual allocations to build its infrastructure and run its programs. It must be able to show what it did with the money and it must show its students, staffers and basic infrastructure. Otherwise it is a ghost and does not deserve any more money.