Campaign to Save ESUT
Enugu State University of Science
and
Technology,
Enugu.
27 February, 2012
The Vice Chancellor
Enugu State Universityof Science
&
Technology.
Dear Sir,
ESUT IS MOVING INTO OBLIVION
We
have been following your administration since your inauguration in
office and we have also reviewed your antecedents as a respected
clinical pharmacy professor and scholar at Obafemi Awolowo University ,
Ife . We however know that academic scholarship does not equal good
leadership and good governance because good leadership and good
governance, like priesthood in civilized humane religions, is a sacred
trust that demand and require qualities of mind and discipline of body
far beyond the needs of ordinary people. We commend the positive spirit
of effecting changes that you have desired for our institution. However
we caution that it appears you have not done an in-depth study of the
problems afflicting our institution. We
came to this conclusion on seeing how certain mistakes and anomalies of
the past are repeating themselves in an alarming proportion under your
watch. A detailed knowledge of all the problems, issues and their
origination as well as their history is vital for you to chart an
enduring way forward. As a scholar you know that a clear statement and
definition of any problem makes for succinct solution. Most of the
problems we will list here, and so many others afflicting ESUT, have
been there long before you took office as the vice chancellor. The
objective therefore is not to blame you for all of them but to make you
realize the enormous tasks before you by presenting to you (believing
you don’t know already) and the general public the effects and impacts
of some of your policies on the university community.
As
stakeholders in the ESUT project being her students, students’ parents,
students’ guardians, graduates and staff as well as good citizens of
Enugu State that desire the wellbeing of this institution, we hereby
present to you, sir, our honest evaluation of your administration so far
with a view to helping your administration stay focused on its
aspiration of pursuing excellence in all facets, educationally, socially
etc. This presentation is done under the following headings:
* Comatose Registry
* Malfunctionality and disorientation of the University Senate
* Lack of student friendly atmosphere
* Lack of Credible Feedback Mechanism
* No strategic blueprint for the future development of ESUT
* No comprehensive strategy for addressing the funding and infrastructural problems
* Staff-Management disconnect
* Anti Lecturers’ disposition
* Selective Prosecution
* Overbearing nature of the Director of Academic Planning
* Extremist posture of the Deputy Vice Chancellor
* Creation of parallel administrative
structures,
* Leadership by cabals and sycophants,
* etc.
1. Comatose Registry.
The
Registry which is a vital organ of the university responsible for
keeping, maintaining and processing the student and staff records has
for a long time in a coma and needs total
overhauling. This comatose condition commenced albeit incrementally
after the exit of then Mr. Festus C. Eze pioneer Registrar of ESUT. This
collapse has progressed exponentially and with subsequent inept and
incompetent Registrars the collapse is now total. During the time of Mr.
F.C. Eze, the Registry was never reminded of their duties of ensuring
prompt regularization, re-grading and confirmation of staff. They were
effective in organizing and coordinating appraisals and promotion
exercises. Generally they understood their responsibilities and worked
hard to live up to the expectation. This is unfortunately the opposite
of what we witness today with the Registry and its principal head, the
Registrar. This crumple is witnessed in the gross inability of the
Registry to execute any of its core mandates as stipulated in the ESUT
edict, and the general academic and administrative regulations despite
the fact that the Registry is the secretariat of senate,
the secretariat of university council and is the heart of
administration of all the faculties and departments. We can therefore
see what this ineptitude, laxity and comatose state of that important
organ of our institution has caused over the years. It is apposite to
note, sir, that all the actors who caused this deplorable state of
affairs of the Registry are still very much around you as faculty deans
and top aides of your administration. What specifically are the adverse
consequences of the comatose state of the Registry? Foremost has been
the inability to keep and maintain any records, even trivial records, of
the institution. This incontrovertible fact revealed itself in recent
times during the students’audit exercise of the year 2010. It is
unimaginable, insulting and unforgivable that the registry had no
records of students and their distribution in the different departments.
The sketchy records of the various departments had to be relied upon
for that exercise. It was observed that there were discrepancies in the
records kept by the departments and the faculties on the same subject.
Another case is the 14th convocation ceremony held in
December 2011 for graduands of 1998 till date. It was witnessed that the
Registry had no detailed records of those approved by senate for
graduation even as they were the architects, authors, custodians and
keepers of all senate documents relating thereto. All graduation
documentation passed through the examinations and senate offices of the
Registry yet they were found wanting in the task of compiling a detailed
list of graduating students from 1998 till the December 2011
convocation. What a shame!!! A Registrar worth the name would have
resigned over his gross incompetence in this regard. However we know
that in our clime top officers of universities don’t resign until shoved
aside. The present Registrar is chronically inept, grossly incompetent
and is completely bereft of any idea of how to rejuvenate and
revitalize this important organ of the university. Otherwise, if he has
any clues or ideas for improving the administration, what proposals for
rejuvenating the administration has he put together for the
consideration and approval of the Vice Chancellor since the two years he
has occupied that office? What has he done to ensure the integrity and
effectiveness of the record keeping duties? We found he has done
nothing. The chronic ineptitude and laxity of the Registry was also
witnessed during the 2006 appraisals in their loss of appraisal
documents of staff members submitted to them earlier by faculties,
institutes and other units in the university. Given this comatose state
of the Registry can they be relied upon for an accelerated appraisals
exercise that will result in the appraisal process being up to date? In
our view they lack the capacity and competence to organize and
coordinate this.
The ineptitude of the Registry has brought so much disrepute to our
institution. The ineptitude is also seen in the inability of the
Registry to keep, maintain and issue academic transcripts of students in
a timely manner. This has resulted in many missed opportunities for
foreign post graduate studies and even for post graduate studies within
the country for some of us who graduated from ESUT. It takes over a year
after having paid for transcript application fees for undergraduate and
first degree transcript applications to be processed and sent to
requesting institutions. Unfortunately this long wait is sufficient time
for the applicants to lose the opportunities. The worst is that
sometimes the applicants are told that no records of their graduation
and transcripts could be found either in the examinations division or
the records division. Such applicants are then requested to prove their
studentship during the periods in question they claimed they
were students. This has caused so much discontent amongst alumni of
ESUT. Many months after the conclusion of the 2006 appraisal exercise
why hasn’t the 2007 appraisal commenced? What is delaying the
commencement? Why hasn’t the Vice Chancellor lived up to his promise of
expediting the appraisal and promotion of deserving staff? Why are we in
2006 appraisal in 2012? It is doubtful if the appraisal process can
ever be up to date at the rate the exercise is moving. A drastic
surgical overhaul of the Registry that will see the removal of the
Registrar, for chronic ineptitude and gross incompetence, and his
replacement with a competent administrator, who comprehends fully the
work, mandate and centrality of his office in driving positive reforms
in the university, is needed. Unfortunately your administration is
aiding the collapse of the Registry by your approval that the Director
of Academic Planning takes over, directs and supervises the electronic
registration of students. We have even observed that in doing this work
of e-registration of students there are no defined relationships
between her authority and that of the Registrar, breeding confusion most
often. She has even overreached herself on many occasions when she
issued directives to some deputy registrars who refused to implement
same on the excuse that her directives breached official channels of
communication. We need not cite specific instances of where she has
acted as if she were the Registrar.
2.
Mal-functionality and disorientation of the University Senate
ESUT
Senate became malfunctioned and was even in a comatose state for many
years when the major functions of that very important organ of the
university were illegally and illegitimately transmitted to the office
and person of the Vice Chancellor; particularly during the
administration of Prof Chukwu. This malfunction and comatose state of
the university senate became a major eye
sore during the last VISITATION of the university. The Chairman of the
visitation panel had to openly lament the sorry state of the senate and
queried whether indeed there were professors worthy of that title in
ESUT. She, a Judge and prominent officer in the Church of Nigeria ,
Anglican Communion, emphasized that if there were professors worth the
title they wouldn’t have allowed the illegal transmission of the power
to approve degree results to the Vice Chancellor alone. That illegal
action of the university senate in transmitting their core mandate to
the vice chancellor was what set it irretrievably to the path of
perdition. For many months there was no evidence that senate has met
even on the most trivial issues. There were thus no records of senate
meetings, talk less of their resolutions. Yet there were professors in
the university
who were obviously afraid to confront and challenge that illegality.
Vice Chancellor, sir, a similar obnoxious policy was inadvertently made
by your administration at its wake. That policy is the illegal
transmission of the power to approve degree results from the senate to
the committee of deans and directors, because of the complaints
regarding the huge costs of making photocopies of the graduation
documents for each and every senate member. Under that policy, the
committee of deans and directors approves all degree results ostensibly
on behalf of senate; and subsequently the same degree results in very
highly abridged format that takes away the names, details, and other
particulars of the graduating students are then forwarded to senate for
the rubber stamping process of ratification. The ratification is here
presented as rubber stamping because the senate documentation of those
degree results presented for its ratification are devoid of any details
which can make members raise issues or interrogate those particular
degree results. This obnoxious act of your administration raises some
pertinent questions. Some are as follows:
* Can
senate legally and rightfully abdicate and transmit its core statutory
function of approving and ratifying degree results to another body, even
as that body is a tiny subset of senate?
* Will
professors of the university, who are neither deans nor directors, not
rightly feel alienated by this policy that excludes them from
participation in the process of deciding the graduation fate of students
they produce?
* Will
heads of departments not feel marginalized that they are excluded from
participation in approving degree results they themselves have produced?
Etc.
We
believe that this policy which you said
is the outcome of your consultations with the committee of deans and
directors upon your inauguration in office are ill-advised, ill-inspired
and mischievous. Our investigations revealed that the advice was for
personal aggrandizement of self seeking hawks in your administration
with overall interest in fraud; and a determination to bring dishonour
and resentment to your administration. This ill-advised policy will lead
to a further weakening of the senate as an important organ of the
university. One of the reasons for the weakness of senate is that as
noted earlier senate has not been functioning well for many years and
members of the university community have since for a longtime forgotten
how to raise issues and debate and arrive at decisions and conclusions
reflecting the collective will of statutory organs of the system. Your
administrations policy in this matter will further
alienate all professors and departmental heads from your administration
as the policy makes them completely irrelevant and inconsequential.
3. Lack of Student friendly
atmosphere.
Your
administration is not student friendly at all. This is evident in the
many insensitive policies you have designed since your taking office.
The long delays in graduating students have continued under your
administration. It takes an average of two years from the end of degree
examinations for the first batch of students of that set to be presented
and considered for graduation. This has been the situation before you
took office. We were hopeful that your taking office would redress the
situation. But unfortunately that has not happened. Your administration
has even added more impetus to this anomaly by decreeing that the
effective graduating year of any student is whenever his result is
considered and the student is liable to pay fees during the
period. Therefore, as it takes an average of 2 years to process and
graduate a student without any carryover course, ESUT students are
forced to pay for years they neither did any academic work nor take any
exams. What a sham! Is it the responsibility of a student to write an
examination, examine and grade himself, compute his results and graduate
himself in ESUT? What actually will your administration gain from this?
The situation is worse for any student who failed any final year course
or those students whom out of administrative faults of their various
departments have their results missing from the departmental custody,
they may stay in the system for up-to 4 years and above before their
problems are rectified giving them extra years above the NUC regulation.
Instead of your administration to recognize the fact that those
students actually completed their academic work within the stipulated
time frame for their programs and address the reasons why
they have stayed that long before leaving the system, your
administration decided to use the problem created by inefficient system
in ESUT to exploit the students, their parents, guidance and their
psyche. Furthermore, you inconsiderately and coldheartedly disregarded
the frequent and loud complaints from students about the fee clearance
processes. You have personally issued and signed circulars directing the
issuance of failure grades to all those students who took examinations
without examination numbers even as the students and even lecturers have
pointed out the many flaws and inadequacies of that process. Last
semester, lecturers were clearly directed, with the threat of sanctions,
by your administration to issue failure grades to all students who
wrote examinations without examination numbers irrespective of
performance at the examinations and class work without minding the
reasons for their inability to get their examination numbers processed
before the examinations. Chei!!! This is sadistic! In the past ten
years 40 percent of all ESUT students graduated in third class degrees
and below. A study of the graduation statistics in other universities
including your former university- Obafemi Awolowo University , Ife ,
shows that the ESUT statistics calls for an inquiry. But unfortunately
that is yet to happen. With this new policy more than 65 percent of all
ESUT graduates will likely be in third class and pass degrees, Ewoo!!!
What a calamity! Do you ever pause to consider the ruinous consequences
of this ill-advised and irresponsible policy on the generation of
Ndigbo, mostly of Enugu State indigeneship, who are being put at a
disadvantage in the labour and intellectual market place? That policy
was the height of insensitivity knowing the enormous pitfalls and
shortfalls of that electronic registration exercise which many of the
ESUT ICT staff members can readily attest to. No remarkable improvement
has attended this exercise despite its age of implementation. Most of
the shortcomings that attended the fee clearance exercise at its
inception in 2010 are still very much present in 2012 and students have
been made to carry the brunt of those shortcomings and failures of the
process. This insensitivity is further exacerbated by the fact that many
students who are issued with these failure grades as directed by you
have paid their school fees but are waiting for their fees to be
confirmed and re-confirmed before they are issued with an examination
number. Is it not criminal that you collected school fees from a student
and you failed the student for your inefficiency and
irresponsibility? At this time and age your administration through your
cronies are embarking on manual administrative processes which is
designed consciously and unconsciously to fail at inception. Though it
is not surprising that your administration is still in Stone Age as
almost all your management teams are not ICT compliant. They don’t even
have e-mail addresses nor do they know how to do anything in the
internet; some of them professors! In addition, it is noteworthy that
this confirming and reconfirming exercise is the immediate cause of the
death of Engr Ani of Computer Engineering Department. However we have
noticed that your administration has consistently and repeatedly turned a
blind eye to genuine complaints from students regarding a few faculty
deans who have embarked upon a systematic exploitation of their students
and staff members because of your closeness to them (the deans).
To be continued in our next release.
We
are sincerely grateful for your comments and support towards the cause
of saving our university. We promise to keep our correspondences with
you in utmost and professional secret as we continue looking forward to
your invaluable information.
However, remember that we always must
investigate any information given before broadcast. Please don’t be discouraged if we have not treated any of your feedbacks.
God bless ESUT!
CC
His Excellency, the Governor of Enugu State
Hon. Commissioner for Education, Enugu State
Deputy Vice Chancellor ESUT
Registrar, ESUT
ASUU, ESUT
SSANU, ESUT
NASU, ESUT
Student Union, ESUT
Ohaneze Ndigbo
The Clergy:
His Lordship, Bishop E.O. Chukwuma
His Lordship, Bishop C.V.C. Onaga
Msgr Obiora Ike
ESUT Governing Council
University Community
The General Public
No comments:
Post a Comment