…As cabal regroups to hold poly to ransom
From Petrus Obi, Enugu
Barely few weeks after the Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, appointed Prof Augustine Uche Nweze, as the new Rector of the state-owned Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), stakeholders are worried that the old cabal would re-establish their hold on the institution.
Nweze took over from Prof Mike Iloeje as Rector of the polytechnic, as the Governor also inaugurated the new Governing Council, with Dr Festus Uzor as Chairman.
Some stakeholders, who spoke with Campus Sun, said the new Rector would face a tedious task sustaining the legacy of the past administration. Others expressed fears that the admission racketing cabal that wrecked untold havoc before the past administration gave them a tough fight, would return to business to reverse the achievements recorded in the polytechnic.
Investigation revealed that before October 2011 when Iloeje was appointed as Rector, a faceless cabal held the institution to ransom and pushed the polytechnic down the hill. For violating some of the regulations of the National Board for Technical Education, (NBTE) the institution was axed and its accreditation to operate as a polytechnic withdrawn. The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) was directed to stop processing admission of students into the school, while NYSC was also mandated to stop mobilizing IMT graduates for the one-year mandatory service.
Beyond exceeding the carrying capacity, from 7080 to 35,000, the institution was ruled by a cabal, which took major decisions in the school. It was a reign of vice, with cases of sex for mark, buying of marks and missing scripts among students. The rot in the system was so bad that the level of education degenerated and students collapsed on daily basis in overcrowded classrooms. Admission was for the highest bidder and female students who refused to go to bed with lecturers faced hell.
It was at this darkest era in the history of the institution that the former governor, Sullivan Chime, sacked the management team and appointed a new rector to rescue the polytechnic. Prof Iloeje came from the Federal University of Technology Owerri in October 2011 with a mandate to resurrect IMT.
Iloeje recounted the odds he met in the polytechnic, saying, “Rather than the three year tenure for HOD’s and Directors, there were Head of Departments that have been there for eight to nine years and they saw it as a private empire. Some threatened me, some threatened spiritual and physical harm on me, juju and different things. Some said they were going to kidnap me and I faced all kinds of personal attacks.”
Undaunted, the new management went to work and provided NBTE with a credible road map for downsizing IMT; it also got NBTE to agree that the carrying capacity is not cast in iron but has to be matched with resources and capacity to carry such number of students.
Iloeje and his team stipulated five O’level credits in relevant subjects as entry requirement, which include English Language and Mathematics. While adhering strictly to carrying capacity, they worked on the class sizes and infrastructure. Lecturers went back to work and within a space of time, they secured NBTE accreditation for 34 of IMT programmes; 17 of those programmes got full accreditation valid for the next five years; the others got interim accreditation valid for two years.
Giving account of his stewardship, Iloeje noted that classroom sizes are now smaller and more students- friendly. He said students can now sit in comfort in the classroom, as there are better contacts and better supervision between staff and students. IMT, he said, has done away with large classes where more than two-thirds of the class are not even accommodated within the classrooms; where some perch on the window copying note from somebody who is copying from somebody who is inside the hall and seeing the lecturer.
To sustain the new order in IMT, Iloeje enforced what he called ‘missing scripts, missing salary’. “Before now lecturers will say scripts are missing as a way of harassing the students and collecting money from them through the back door. Now if there is any missing script the salary of that lecturer will be missing. I implemented it here two years ago and I want to tell you that there are no more missing scripts and no more missing salaries,” Iloeje said.
From 2011 when the Iloeje administration came into IMT, the school provided 4,600 additional sitting spaces.
He explained other steps he took to reposition the polytechnic, saying, “There is a conducive learning environment; the lecturer himself, many of our classrooms now is enabled by audio visuals. So, the lecturer is in a better command. He can see the students and they see him and there is a better interaction between teacher and student. So that has increased our learning environment.
“In a semester many of our lecturers have opportunity to go oversees at least once a year for international conferences. That lecturer comes back with greater confidence in his ability and mastery of the subject matter. Better skills are acquired. He interacts with his colleagues on a global academic market place and when he is back, it rubs off positively on the students. The lecturer is better able to deliver his materials and more confident. I give you an example; there are many lecturers who could not use power point but if you have to attend a conference oversees, you no longer go to read papers, you present it in a power point format. Many of them also in interactive video conferencing and seminars are better tuned and the mere fact that they travelled abroad to compete with professional peers oversees rubs off positively on them. There is nothing that has improved the capacity of the students to perform better than the lecturers themselves who came back.
“One thing I am very proud about here is the rapid proliferation of ICT capacity on my campus. IMT’s webometric ranking has galloped tremendously from almost a zero percentage capability in ICT. We now have 600 workstations in our ICT Centre which we partner with Afrihub. It has mega speed, fast access to the internet and five multi-media classrooms. They have 120-seater-capacity digital lab where our students can access any published material anywhere in the world within seconds.”
Speaking with passion on how IMT has become a haven for learning, Iloeje disclosed that plans are at an advanced stage for a new Computer Based Training Centre (CBC), adding that the building for the centre is almost ready.
Iloeje laid the foundation for the institution to develop into a university. However, his exit leaves behind a vacuum for his successor to fill. Despite the daunting task, the Chairman of the Governing Council, Dr. Uzor, who spoke on behalf of the other members during their inauguration, pledged to work assiduously to reinvent the greatness of IMT as a foremost polytechnic in the country.