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From Aniekan Aniekan, Calabar
Students of the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Calabar (UNICAL) have staged a peaceful protest on campus against the slow pace of the accreditation process.
The protesting students have accused the institution’s management of frustrating the accreditation process of the pharmacy programme.
The students, who began their programme in 2016, claim that years of neglect, underfunding, and poor infrastructure have put their academic future in jeopardy.
Ndifreke Okowo, one of the protesting students, alleged that the programme has suffered continuous setbacks due to the university’s failure to meet basic accreditation standards set by the National Universities Commission (NUC) and the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria (PCN).
“We got to 400 level when we were suddenly told that we had been running an illegal programme,” Okowo said.
The students claim that the programme remains largely unaccredited due to a lack of qualified lecturers, poor facilities, and unequipped laboratories.
“Our labs are not equipped; we don’t even have classrooms to sit in,” Okowo added.
The students have called on the federal and state governments, as well as the Pharmacists Council of Nigeria, to intervene urgently to prevent the collapse of the programme and save their years of academic efforts.
Some of the key demands of the protesting students include the lack of qualified lecturers, poor facilities and unequipped laboratories, insufficient funding as well as failure to meet accreditation standards.
The protesters expressed concerns that the current situation has created uncertainty about their academic future, fear of programme collapse and called for urgent intervention.
Effiong Eyo, the university’s Public Relations Officer said he is not aware of the situation and promised to provide details in due course.
