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‘How Auchi polytechnic tackled lecturers demanding sex for marks’

By Michael Egbejule
05 April 2019   |   3:08 am
Dr. Momodu Sanusi Jimah is the Rector of Auchi Polytechnic, Edo State. In this interview with Michael Egbejule, he speaks on the milestones reached by the polytechnic and other issues affecting the institution. Excerpt: How do you tackle sexual harassment between lecturers and students and the issue of sorting of money for marks? I have…

Auchi Polytechnic

Dr. Momodu Sanusi Jimah is the Rector of Auchi Polytechnic, Edo State. In this interview with Michael Egbejule, he speaks on the milestones reached by the polytechnic and other issues affecting the institution. Excerpt:

How do you tackle sexual harassment between lecturers and students and the issue of sorting of money for marks?
I have such cases on my table where four lecturers recorded students who attempted to entice them and the students have on their own, expelled themselves because they were invited to face a panel and they absconded till date.

The issue of sex for marks or higher grade has been put to an end as far as Auchi Polytechnic is concerned. We have achieved not less than 94 per cent compliance; the reason is simple, you need somebody who is not corrupt to check the system and make sure there is no corruption. You need a will power. I was born and bred in Auchi, I attended Auchi Polytechnic for my ND, HND and PGD and have been lecturing here for the past 29 years.

So, the whole of my life for nearly 60 years is inside Auchi. This is the only industry we look up to from this part of town. All my stakes are here. If I were corrupt, I will not be able to check corruption.

When we came onboard, 36 lecturers were sanctioned by the Federal Ministry of Education; some were dismissed, some terminated and some demoted. Some went to court and we are telling them that they cannot come back to the school if they have so destroyed it.

Ask any contractor or anybody in this school, nobody demands gratification of any form, if you are caught, its your business. My staff and subordinates know the law and my body language. No paper spends more than 24 hours on any table; that way, you cannot demand for any money from anybody.

When you were appointed, there were oppositions from some quarters, suddenly, everywhere is quiet. How were you able to tackle it and what is your relationship with them now?
For every political position, you don’t expect people to keep quiet when a lot of persons applied for it.

The position of a Rector is both political and academic. It is political in the sense that you are appointed by the commander in chief; that is, the President. It is also academic because you must obtain the requisite qualifications. By the grace of God I met the criteria; others also met the criteria but one person has to be appointed.

Two persons cannot become Rector at the same time. Luckily by the grace of God, I was appointed. Before then, we all agreed to support whoever gets the Rector job. We were steadfast, we have answers to all petitions they gave to us; some, extremely ridiculous. All accusations leveled against me had no basis.

For example, somebody said he has spent 15 years lecturing here on part-time basis, and for this fifteen years, there have been recruitment three times but he was not selected yet he said he was the best; before I came onboard and when I came onboard, I said if you must teach in the evening programme, you must have either a 2.2 or an upper credit and we discovered this person has a third class degree. And so, he started writing petitions and we came out with our own facts. Some of them even sponsored students to cause mayhem in the school and the students involved were caught.

By and large, most of them who competed with me are holding offices. Those who have the school at heart supported us and they were embraced but those who say they must be president or one thing or the other are on their own but one thing is clear, this is a government where everybody is called to serve.

On your relationship with the polytechnic unions
I am a comrade and acting under the union. I know what the union wants which is the welfare of staff and payment of emolument as and when due and meet any agreements reached.

When I came onboard, we couldn’t pay salaries for a month and I said no, it is not feasible to pay the arrears they have been asking for, for some reasons but we can start payment from somewhere.

I can tell you authoritatively that even though we pay allowances from Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), we have saved enough to pay allowances up to June/July. I don’t have any problem with the unions. Once you pay them their allowances and check-up dues, there is no problem.

When I came onboard, it was alleged that the unions were being owed N1.8b, now we have paid about N800 million plus. I paid from IGR even debts I did not incur but government is a continuous process and I needed to offset it.

As I speak, we are done with the approval of promotions. That is what the unions want. Promotion of members, payment of allowances and salaries as and when due.

The school has recorded progress in infrastructural development. Are there programmes commensurate with what you have put on ground vis-a-vis programmes that have accreditation?
Currently, we have 66 programmes. 51 are fully accredited while 15 have just been listed for accreditation; that is for the old programmes. But we have appealed that new programmes be open for us to run. We have about 11 new programmes which we are trying to kick-start; we have programmes like Taxation Technology, Library and Information Science, Nursing Technology, Pharmaceutical Technology, Medical Records Technology and a lot of others and we have sent this to the authorities concerned to give us approval.

On the issue of accreditation, what is the position of your architecture programme?
The major deficiency was that, there were no joint studios. The studios that were built by my predecessors, collapsed but we have been able to resuscitate these studios and we have procured a very powerful Hi-Tech digital items and latest software so students can now use. We have dedicated a whole complex to architecture so we are sure of getting HND accreditation.

Why did the Polytechnic embark on convocation of two academic sessions at the beginning of the year?
Actually, when I came onboard in 2017, there was a backlog. We tried our best to recover the 2015/2016 academic session. As of now, we have two sessions to cover.

Convocation is the height of a process of graduating students. After finishing an exam, you cannot say you have graduated until you convoke. Convocation is a final seal in the sense that, it indicates you have finished your exam and you are now an alumnus of the school.

When will it be possible to get the statistics of percentage of graduands?
The school is a large school and the biggest Polytechnic in the South-South geo-political zone in Nigeria. We have a very large number of students and our staff are good too.

Recently, we were rated as number one Polytechnic in Nigeria. This is a destination for candidates who want to get polytechnic education. For 2016/2017 session, we have a total of 241 Distinctions, which is made up of 183 HND graduands and 58 National Diploma graduands.

For 2017/2018 academic session, we have 199 HND and 145 ND and another 1 totaling 345 Distinctions. If you add all of them together, you are going to get something near or about 486 Distinctions which is high and I dare say, these students can hold their own at any point in time anywhere in the world and I stand to be challenged by anybody. If we give a student First Class or Distinction, the student merits it.

The usual corruption whereby students block lecturers for grade is no longer in play in Auchi Polytechnic. The total of 486 Distinction students we are graduating are part of the 28,000 departmental graduands both ND and HND for the two sessions.

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