By Nwafor Okafor
Sixteen years after its inception, the
Anambra State Polytechnic, Ngbakwu, in the Awka North Local Government Area of the state is yet to produce qualified graduates for the National Youth Service Corps ( NYSC) programme.
The rector of the polytechnic, Dr.Njideka Chiekezie, stated this during an interactive session with the Anambra State House of Assembly’s committee on tertiary education and officials of the institution.
The rector said the polytechnic required enough funding to meet her
accreditation requirements to enable graduates produced by the institution to be enlisted in the mandatory one year NYSC programme for Nigerian university and polytechnic graduates.
Chiekezie, who became rector of the polytechnic recently, described the situation she met on ground as despicable, adding that it would require frantic efforts to enable graduates of the school to overcome the problem.
She said,”The HND programmes of the polytechnic are not accredited; this is the major reason students of the institution are not enrolled into the NYSC scheme.”
She said the budget being approved for the institution only covers payment of salaries, overheads and allied expenses, but did not take care of accreditation of programmes because accreditation, according to her, was capital intensive and done as a separate budget.
She said: “In order for us to obtain this accreditation, it requires the uplifting of the infrastructure in the school. What we need is listed in our capital budget. So, if we see fund for accreditation, there will be a change in infrastructure.
“We need engineering workshops, classroom blocks and we also desire to introduce more courses in our school but because we don’t have enough buildings to accommodate these courses, we are handicapped. So we are in dire need of classroom blocks and other infrastructure in the polytechnic. “
