Sorry, IMT Enugu is sick
Acting Rector of IMT, Professor Mike U. Iloeje, who lamented the development during his maiden address at an extra-ordinary meeting of the school’s academic board, said, “it has become common knowledge even to the man on the streets, to our staff and students, to our alumni, to our supervisory agencies, to the tax-payer, to government […]
Acting Rector of IMT, Professor Mike U. Iloeje, who lamented the development during his maiden address at an extra-ordinary meeting of the school’s academic board, said, “it has become common knowledge even to the man on the streets, to our staff and students, to our alumni, to our supervisory agencies, to the tax-payer, to government and various stakeholders in tertiary education, that IMT is sick. Something has gone terribly wrong here. The problems that face us are unique. While other institutions are grappling with problems of improving their global ranking, we are threatened by the stark problem of survival. ”
Illoeje bemoaned the current predicament of the school. “We are in a situation where to mention but a few, our institution is facing denied accreditation; our graduates are having great difficulties being accepted to their National Youth Service (NYSC); the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), is hesitating to allow us process admission of candidates into our institution; we are living with the fear of a possible close-down.”
More than 100 placards-brandishing students, wearing forlorn looks, marched to the Enugu State House of Assembly, where they demanded the urgent intervention of the legislators in the matter. Similarly, during the 78th birthday anniversary of former Biafran leader, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, at his GRA, Enugu, residence, the same placards-carrying students took their protest to the venue of the ceremony. Obviously, they wanted the world to hear their story!
IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF IMT’S PROBLEMS:
The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) had recently withdrawn accreditation for programs being offered by the tertiary institution. Whereas the NBTE probably allows admission of, say, 2000 students annually, IMT would reportedly be violating the NBTE regulation by overshooting its carrying capacity of the NYSC with as many as over 150 percent.
The NYSC, for some time, was said to have ignored IMT and its obvious ‘disobedience’ by pretending as if it was unaware of ‘the sin of overshooting its (IMT’s) proper carrying capacity.’ But the recent change of leadership of the Director-General of the NYSC apparently brought about a dramatic ‘stampede’ at IMT.
First and foremost, the new man piloting the affairs of the NYSC, served last at the 82 Division, Nigerian Army, Enugu, and possibly had an idea of the huge population of the school, although it was not in accordance with the NBTE guidelines.
Eventually, the NYSC petitioned the NBTE about the number of students IMT usually sends for the service, stating that IMT’s figures quite outnumber the number allotted it. NYSC therefore enjoined NBTE to quickly call the management of the school to order since the NYSC has the tradition of always wanting to save cost. This is how the ‘wahala’ began for the once famous school, and the NBTE had to order its closure, having withdrawn its accreditation.
At the Enugu House of Assembly, spokesman of the protesting students, Mr. Festus Eluke, said before the NBTE hammer fell on the school, they had been mobilised and given call-up numbers which would enable them to participate in the NYSC.
He told the lawmakers that they regretted that rather than collect their call-up letters for the national youth service orientation programme scheduled for November 15, 2011, they were informed that they had been put on hold. “If IMT management commits any offence against NBTE, it should be punished, and not the students,” he told the legislators.
Eluke described the NBTE’s clamp down on the school as unjustified, warning of the dire consequences which might cause restiveness by the students and their possible engagement in social vices.
But the House Majority Leader, Mr. Sunday Ude-Okoye, who addressed the protesting students, assured them that government would contact the management of IMT and take appropriate measures to resolve the issue.
The institute’s Acting Director of Students’ Affairs, Mr. Sylvanus Asogwa, said on phone that the management was already looking into the students’ predicament, but confirmed that they would not be part of the Batch ‘C’ service year. Asogwa promised that efforts were ongoing to register the affected students for the next NYSC batch as soon as negotiations with NBTE are concluded.
REAL GENESIS OF THE PROBLEMS:
IMT was set up by the defunct administration of the former East Central State, during its administrator, Ajie Ukpabi Asika, (now of blessed memory!) soon after the civil war. IMT, Enugu was fashioned after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States of America. Considering this basic fact, Asika was able to convince the famous scholar, Professor Mark Chijioke, to return home from the U.S.A and head the institution. Chijioke, who trained and taught in Massachusetts Institute, answered the call and came back home to become the first Rector of the IMT.
At the outset of its inception, IMT was meant to award degrees but the military government of that era, coupled with the position of the Igbo people (who just emerged from a ravaging 3-year war made that impossible.
All the same, Chijioke was able to put up a high and enviable standard in both academic life and character of the students of the institution, notwithstanding the difficulties. The fame and reputation of the institution soured to high heavens so much that most parents and wards even preferred it to university.
Sunday Trust gathered that products of IMT excelled in whatever field or profession they engaged in – applied arts, building and town planning, engineering, accounting, journalism, insurance, banking, marketing and many others. Even in politics, it can safely be stated here that it is only the positions of President and Vice president that probably have not been produced by the school.
Chairman, Senate Committee on Works, Senator Ayogu Eze (PDP, Enugu North) and former Imo State Governor, Chief Achike Udenwa, for instance, are products of IMT.
IMT’s fame and reputation was brought about by the high quality of academic and non-academic staff, in addition to proper funding by the then East Central State government. Thereafter, East Central State was divided into Anambra and Imo states; the two states continued to finance the institute till the time Imo state established its own polytechnic at Nekede, near Owerri. Now, the duty of funding IMT was left for the old Anambra state. And the financial capacity of the school began to have difficulties.
When old Anambra state was divided into two, the financial fortunes of the institution nosedived further. Enugu state was only taking care of the school and its financial responsibilities. As time went on, the school became rather too big for Enugu state alone to fund.
But what looked like a leeway out of its financial meltdown came when the federal government wanted to take over the school. However, some elders of the state advised the then military governor against the idea, and he rejected the offer. Sunday Trust learnt that that was during the era of Professor Ben Nwabueze as Education minister. The elders of the state preferred giving out the College of Education at Eha-Amufu to the federal government.
GRADUAL DEATH OF IMT?
As at press time, IMT, the great citadel of learning which was once the “centre of qualitative academic activities,” according to a one-time lecturer in the Department of Mass Communication, who now works with CHEVRON Oil, has gradually become “intellectual graveyards where half-baked products are churned out in their thousands annually and where all sorts of fake scholars and intellectuals have turned lecturers over night. The Mass Comm department suffers most in this regard.”
The fact is that IMT, in terms of administration and physical structures, is a ghost of its former self! It now lives in past glory. The school is too big for the state government to finance from its meager resources. Our reporter was informed that the institution, on the average, receives from the Enugu state government a little over N20 million monthly. In the 2011 “Budget of Continuity”, the state government allocated N234, 500 million to the institute.
CASH-AND-CARRY ADMISSION:
But the idea of admitting more than required carrying capacity by the institution was mainly due to scarcity of funds. The more the students, the more the money realized for running of the school. Some departments, especially those of the management sciences overshot their departmental admissions by more than 200 percent.
To rake in more money, the institution introduced what it calls Evening Programme (EVP). The EVP students were made to sign an undertaking, on admission, that they would not participate in the NYSC on graduation. Although the students accepted the condition but they later realized that the implication of their not participating in the NYSC programme after graduation meant that they were over aged. Most of them were actually below 30 years.
Realising the consequence of the documents they signed, the EVP students then put up a strong fight, staging a protest which made the Enugu State House of Assembly to invite the then Rector of the institution, Onyeneje, for explanation. At any rate, the EVP students were victorious in the fight and were allowed to participate in the NYSC alongside the regular students for some years until the latest impasse came up.
While commenting on the NBTE sanction, Onyeneje then had explained that the NBTE’s action against the institution was just temporary withdrawal of accreditation and not total closure of the institution. He admitted that IMT had a problem of enrolment with NBTE but declared that the institution had not committed any other offence than the issue of over enrolment which the authorities had decided to check.
Onyeneje said, “the way they have decided to check it is to have our accreditation withdrawn. So it is clear that we understand it that it is the accreditation that has been withdrawn not that the institution was shut down or clamped down. That is not true. Other normal activities are still going on within the institute.”
He also explained that the implication of the accreditation being withdrawn was that the admission process for new students would be put on hold until the matter is resolved while those graduates who were waiting to be mobilized for Youth Service would also be put on hold until the matter is sorted out.
“We have spoken at so many fora on the need for the federal government to come to the aid of state polytechnics because we produce manpower for this very nation; no matter the percentage; the states are not all that buoyant to take care of some of these things.”
Soon after the NBTE axe fell on the institute, the Enugu state government’s hammer also fell on Onyeneje who was ordered to proceed on compulsory leave immediately the governing council was dissolved.
Confirming the removal of Onyeneje and the dissolution of the governing council of the institution, the state Commissioner of Education, Barr Simeon Otuanya, said Professor Mike Iloeje has been appointed as the new acting rector of the institution.
According to him, a new acting registrar has also been appointed to take over from the former registrar, adding that the state government has also constituted a Judicial Panel of Inquiry to look into the affairs of IMT. He expressed surprise over the accreditation of the courses at IMT, noting that the ugly development should not have happened if the right steps were taken.
Onyeneje did not talk about the accusation leveled against his administration to the effect that he went to church in his village and announced that his kinsmen who needed jobs should hurry to IMT because they would be given automatic employment.
“That was how even gatemen became lecturers in IMT overnight. And that was when we knew that the school was walking a dangerous path; hence that was literally the beginning of its process of demise or what you may call extinction,” says a lecturer in statistics.
Our reporter learnt that during the regime of former Governor Chimaroke Nnamani, he (Nnamani) once requested the list of the best graduating students in each department. After submitting the list compiled by the departments, Nnamani ordered that automatic employments be given to the best graduating students who later became lecturers in the school.
“Some of the beneficiaries of Nnamani’s masterstroke are non-indigenes and these are the people the former Rector wanted to edge out before the wrath of government came heavily on him,” according to the lecturer, who said he would have fallen victim of the rector’s un-academic plot.
The alleged years of rot in IMT appeared to have gone on for a long time. Our reporter was told that even the millions of naira Udenwa donated to the school for a huge project to be built and named after him – the Achike Udenwa Accountancy complex – was embezzled by the authorities. On the day of commissioning the project, Udenwa was said to have arrived the school premises to perform the official opening of the complex but was so disappointed by the small structure that was built and named after him: he and his convoy quickly left angrily and went back to Government House, Owerri. “What did they do with all the money I donated?” the angry and bemused Udenwa was said to have asked with no one providing an answer.
THE WAY OUT:
Before the present ‘darkness’ fell on IMT, the academic board of the school never had meetings for about three years, a situation Iloeje described as unacceptable.
“This board should be allowed to meet as statutorily provided for in the Edict establishing this institution. Today’s meeting is the first step in this new direction,” said Iloeje, who added that, “I am told that the work of many committees has been moribund.”
According to him, the decisions and recommendations of the statutory committee, administrative committees as well as several advisory and ad-hoc committees should be dusted up and brought to the attention of management for policy direction and implementation. “We must resolve the Reader/Chief Lecturer debacle which I hear crippled the smooth administration of some of our committees, especially the Academic Board,” Iloeje said point-blank.
On the issue of accreditation, the Rector said the institute must turn around its present predicament by addressing the issues of its carrying capacities; full-time equivalents (FTE); provisions in the self study forms (SSF) and all other minimum academic standards as stipulated by the supervisory agencies and accreditation bodies.
“We must reposition ourselves in such a way that will convince and enable our proprietor, the Enugu state government, in collaboration with important stakeholders and willing members of the political class, to re-present our case for review by the supervisory and accreditation agencies,” he said.
The Rector who also commented on staff welfare, said the management must do all that is feasible to make the staff happy enough to work efficiently. Promotions, he stressed, must be available to deserving staff, while all grievances should be looked into.
“Within the limits of available funds, salaries, allowances and other personnel emoluments will continue to be paid as and when due; as well as sponsorship to conferences and other capacity building programs,” Iloeje said.
Meanwhile the embattled former Rector of the crisis-filled Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu Professor Edwin Onyeneje, has reacted to the series of allegations made against him by his critics, saying that he is innocent of all the accusations.
Speaking to our reporter yesterday on phone he said he never plotted to remove non-indigene lecturers in order to replace them with his townsmen, nor did he ver went to the church in his village to announce that his kinsmen who needed jobs should come to IMT for automatic employment.
“If you go to the school, you will see the records that there are still non-indigene lecturers in the school who were there during my tenure as the rector. I never did any such thing because no sane person would contemplate such idea. None of the accusations is true. We have evidence that there are people who are non indigenes serving as lecturers during my tenure. The records of what I’m telling your are there,” he said.
He further said, “For anybody to have said that I went to the church in my village to announce for the people to come and get automatic employment is not true. No sane person would do such. It was just an allegation meant by my critics to smear my name and image.”
Onyeneje also denied the allegation of making himself inaccessible to both the students and staff of the school during his administration. “I never made myself inaccessible. You can verify from the students and staff. “If you go to the students union leaders, they will tell you how accessible I was to the students,” he said.