I was on my way to PortHarcourt, the Rivers state capital on Friday, the 24th of January 2014, when I noticed strange developments on the ever busy Owerri-PortHarcourt road that attracted my attention. As I drove past Obinze in Owerri West LGA to Mgbirichi in Ohaji/Egbema LGA of the state, I noticed well dressed people eating and drinking on the scorched sun on the road.
Journalistic instinct forced me to press the brake pedal that led my car to screech to a halt. A closer observation revealed families taking positions to do justice to food and drinks in the booth of their cars. The interesting development was a scene to behold. My subsequent inquiries further revealed that parents of prospective fresh students of the Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo-Ohaji, who left their various designation for the Institution’s 34th Matriculation ceremony got a rude shook of their lives when they were forced not to observe the celebration with their wards and children, no thanks to a two-day demonstration embarked by the host communities against planned balkanisation of course in the school. The bewildered parents and relations of the prospective matriculants who had no option were forced to make do with open spaces on the dusty and polluted road where they shared food and drinks even as nobody was allowed into the campus for the traditional matriculation gown procession ritual and inauguration.
For the first time in the history of the school, it was recording a dismal matriculation outing where fresh students where not only denied entry but lost the privilege of sharing the precious moments with their families an well wishers.
Ominous signs that the Institution would enter the record books as history makers emerged when a rather funny but abnormal incident occurred at the school premises. One fateful morning in August last year, a snake reportedly swallowed another snake at one of the poultry farm sites in the school.
Few weeks after the snake incident occurred, Imo Poly opened another chapter in NYSC records when her graduates admitted for the mandatory one year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme were unceremoniously sacked from the various orientation camps across the country.
Miss Chioma Anyanwu got admission to read Science Lab Technology (SLT) in Imo Poly in 2007/2008. After obtaining her Ordinary National Diploma (OND), she went for mandatory one year Industrial Training in a hospital and resumed to complete her Higher National Diploma (HND) in the school for the same course in 2010 and graduated in 2012.
Unfortunately, Miss Anyanwu was not mobilized to go for the NYSC programme on graduation in 2012. However, she was lucky to be Orientation camp bound in 2013, when her SLT department was considered among others to partake in the 2013 Batch C NYSC programe. Anyanwu was considered lucky because majority of those who had graduated from the school in other business and engineering departments since 2012 have been in abject limbo occasioned by the inability of the management to mobilize them for NYSC.
Prior to November 3, 2013, a hopeful Anyanwu joined others to pay for the necessary fees for clearance warranting issuance of statement of result and NYSC call up letter, necessary ingredients for Orientation Camp registration. An elated Anyanwu informed friends, neighbours and contemporaries about her posting to Kwara State before hitting the camp for the three-week Orientation exercise. The bubble burst for her a day to the passing out exercise when Anyanwu alongside other fresh graduates of Imo Poly in the Orientation Camp were marshaled out in the morning during regular morning drills. The Imo Poly fresh corpers were humiliated before their colleagues as they were summarily dismissed from the camp. Apart from the public insult, they were immediately dekitted and forced to surrender everything they received from NYSC in the camp. Anyanwu collapsed and passed out. She later found herself at a nearby medical centre outside the Orientation Camp before her infamous journey back to Owerri where she resides with the parents. Apparently irked by the Orientation camp ill treatment, Anyanwu refused to go back home preferring to go on self imposed exile until the end of the service year. The young lady is not the only person involved. There are less than 150 demobilized corpers from Imo Poly who underwent this nightmarish experience. Today they are still in limbo and their academic future is in jeopardy.
I am attracted to these developments not just out of pity but because I raised alarm of the impending doom that would befall Imo Poly which was dismissed by some destructive demagogues ravaging the Institution through subtle means. One would want to find out why the NYSC bound Imo Poly graduates were booted out. Because they were given statements of results by school management which not only failed to reflect what they studied but were at variance to what NYSC had. Pure perfidy and national disgrace.
Followers of this column may recall that sometime last year, I came up with a commentary on the planned balkanization of Imo State Polytechnic under the guise of multi-campus system. I revealed that while the school is suffering from improper funding and near comatose of the departments as a result of deaccreditation of the courses by the National Board for Technical Education, NBTE, the state government and indeed the school’s management are toying with a huge joke of running a capital intensive multi campus system with its attendant challenges. Today, I have been vindicated. While the fate of the graduating students hang in the balance since reports have it that the school has been asked by NYSC to wait till 2015 before her products would be accept for NYSC programme, no HND admission for students willing to run management, environment and engineering courses for the 2013/2014 academic session, a disastrous feat that has not been achieved in the Institution since it was upgraded from the a Monotechnic to Polytechnic status by Ikedi Ohakim government in 2007.
To distract prying eyes and Imolites from the rot in the school, the management has been pooling the wool over the eyes of the public with coloured views that dwell more on structures rather than resource facilities and academic development. The introduction of the farce called free education in tertiary schools further submerged qualitative into quantitative education leaving students of the school at the mercy of the theater of absurdities.
Apparently worried by the number of Imo State indigenes and residents of the state seeking admissions into Polytechnics across the country, one of the first major things the Ikedi Ohakim government did in 2007 when it came into power was to raise the status from Monotechnic to Polytechnic and renaming it Imo State Polytechnic against the old name of Michael Okpara College of Agriculture and Technology, (MOCATECH) after the state assembly amended the edict establishing the school. And it had no multi campus clause. Part of the reasons why the Ohakim government considered it necessary to raise the standard of the school and convert it to a Polytechnic was the denial of NYSC programmes and non receipt of relevant grants from Tetfund, ETF and federal agencies due to Polytechnics and universities in the country which the Institution missed in the past. From 2007 when it departed from the agriculture-oriented courses to other management, environmental and engineering disciplines the school run both courses at OND and HND levels. Moreso, NYSC re-captured the graduates of the school for the one-year service programme until the present administration came on board with a killer punch that is indirectly snuffing life out of the school. As at 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, graduates of Imo Poly were captured in NYSC and joined graduates of other schools for the programme without facing disgrace in camps. HND students were admitted in almost all the courses.
However, the coming of the new government introduced clannish interest buoyed with selfish primordial tendencies of the key players in the administration of the day.
Instead of improving on what was met on ground and nursing the infant departments and disciplines to acceptable levels, what pre-occupied the minds of present day government officials was how to destroy part of the legacy Ohakim bequeathed the people with a view to relocating the newly introduced courses and departments that accompanied its transformation to Polytechnic status, to their favoured locations in what could be described as an attempt at “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
Like the Yoruba will always say using one of their popular adage “Ti won ba fun were loko odo ara e lo ma kosi” meaning, “when you give an imbecile/mad person hoe or farming item to harvest, he/she will always draw the proceeds to his/her side”, those who found themselves on the seat of power at the moment are merely showcasing partisan proclivity by scrambling for the infant institution without justifiable reasons. In one of his routine inspection tour of Orlu LGA in September 2012, Imo State governor, Owelle Rochas Okorocha without recourse to the law establishing Imo Poly did publicly announce that the Technological Skills Acquisition Centre, Orlu, has been made a campus of Imo Poly, where as government fund was spent to build another rather private owned modern skills acquisition centre called, ICAPS in Owerri.
When the governor was reminded that it was only in military regime or fascist government that pronouncements have effect, a bill to change Imo Poly status was smuggled into the House of Assembly for the required effect.
As usual with the present House, a legislative abracadabra ensued when the bill did not pass the necessary crucibles to become a law. There is no public hearing or debate during plenary. I stand to challenge the House to make available hansards showing contributions or video recordings of the members’ sitting. Rather, at an exclusive and inner chamber meeting reminiscent of the controversial and provocative Abortion Law, the Speaker who is from Okigwe Zone noticed that since Umuagwo where the main campus is domiciled is in orlu transferring the engineering departments to Orlu as planned will make his zone losers hence the Cooperative College at Ehime Mbano was made a campus of Imo Poly to house management courses. Alarmed at the balkanization agenda, a Member from Owerri Zone who stumbled into the document that was not made known to all lawmakers insisted that he would squeal and rock the boat if his area was not included. Therefore, the school of environmental studies was handed over to Owerri Zone to be situated at St Columbus Secondary School Premises, Amaimo, Ikeduru LGA. Contrary to different insinuations making the rounds for the balkanization, parochial interest warranted the scramble and partition of Imo Poly.
One would pause to ponder why Imo Poly should be the sacrificial lamb after the governor has met fruitless attempt in the past to experiment with the Imo State University, Owerri. At the birth of the present regime, structures begun at Ogboko Okorocha’s home town said to be the permanent site of IMSU. Jokingly, a sign post was erected at Ogboko signaling the permanent site of the state-owned university. It generated spontaneous reactions from people of Owerri Zone and indeed entire Imo people who not only kicked against but engaged in ferocious resentment of the move as it was in contrast with the desire of the people. Instead of the Ogboko permanent site gamble, Imolites had expected Okorocha to set up the Engineering College schedule to be in Okigwe Zone. When the IMSU Ogboko permanent site ploy failed, the governor bamboozled the people with fairy tales of three new campuses for each of the three zones. While the committee set up to find a suitable place for the IMSU permanent site in Owerri Zone died a premature death with their report going with the impeachment of former Deputy Governor, Jude Agbaso who headed the committee, the rumoured Jesuit Layola University meant for Ngor Okpala/Aboh Mbaise ended only on paper. For Okigwe people, their own university is rhetoric.
Please keep a date with this column for continuation of part two of this commentary limited space is forcing me to an abrupt end.
