OSCOTECH, ESA-OKE, OSPOLY, IREE; TALE OF TWIN HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE AND THE GOVERNMENT’S NON-CHALANCE
By Oyindamola Gabriel
Education, they say, is the bedrock of development in any nation. A country that plays with quality education has lost it national treasure. It is the pathway to future of hope and glory, no doubt.
Having propagated education and entrenched its importance through public advocacy and environmental ambience that could make offering it a constant comfortability for effective learning, goes with it is acceptability of purpose and financial convenience to guarantee a successful academic end for a student.
Also, a very expensive education is like dangling a carrot before the rabbit. It worsens the process and whittles down the potentials for authentic creativity so much that financially agonized student portends to inhibit his natural art and forges forward to obtain the ultimate goalthe certificateby all means necessary. That is systemic decimation of ideas and ideals.
It is also important to express that the classroom alone cannot prepare the student for academic attainments in life. As a matter of fact, it is settled in reality that quality teachers with proper motivation and secured employment and who are undoubtedly equipped with the appropriate academic materials are the antidote to a decaying academic platform. They is the elixir to kill the poisoning in an academic process.
Osun State Polytechnic, Iree and her sister, Osun State College of Technology, Esa-Oke are the high-ground tertiary institutions of the state which have made many top shots in the country and around the world. The alumnus can be counted in thousands and they are making waves in their different chosen careers. Kudos to the ideas that berthed the institutions because they did not only impacted knowledge. They also made education affordable and competitive for promotion of quality and determination for success in life.
As it is today, it is sad and ‘de-patronizing’ to see these alma maters descending to become condescending in their superior ideas and ideals that put them at par with some universities within their catchments and set them apart from their contemporaries in the country. Having properly interrogated the varied infirmities suffered by these citadels, the answer came clear that the schools are controlled out of ideas and value. To relocate these colleges back to their glorious days, it is important for the stakeholders both in the public and private lives to orbit round these precarious and unsatisfactory developments because the colleges are sailing towards ominous waves that would devalue and deflate their status and stature among their peers.
It is an established fact that the academic staff that are charged with the responsibility of inculcating ideals in the students and at the same time, pack and impact them with knowledge for value in the future have descended to an extreme decadence by trading value and knowledge for money. The better part of students academic journey to fruition is the research, writing and defence of his thesis. This process has turned out to be juicy market for the teachers who are supposed to be the eye behind the back of the school authority and the parents. At the dire peak of this project exercise, they violate, exploit and extort these students with humongous sum of money. It is called free passage obligation. They charge as high as fifty thousand naira before they let go of a student. This not only kills the standard, it does relegate these schools to nothing. They lose their glory and value and painfully, turn out half-baked, unproductive valueless labour. It is a total loss to the government, the school, the society and mostly, the parents. That is just one part of the whole show of disbelief that has crept its way into the fabrics of these two institutions system.
It will not amount to genuine criticism for proper rehabilitation if the registries of these schools are exempted in this attempt to examine the diverse maladies confronted by these polytechnics. The members of staff of the Exams and Records have become the untouchable to the tune that one assumes that their corruptive indices are permanently incurable. They act with impunity in such a manner that one would not find it nauseating to mildly submit that the upper authorities gave them the green card to lord over their responsibility by asking for gratification as precondition to work. Old students can recall sore experiences in the process of requesting for their transcripts and certificates or recommendation letters directed to the registry.
The latest version of the corruption in this department is sickening. Request for the collection of transcript or a recommendation letter has been so marketwise, particularly at OSCOTECH, that they hardly have fuel in their generating set to type. They do not request for money stylishly. They are so emboldened that they ask you face to face to pay. There is nobody to deter them because one finds it hard to argue if the oga at the top was not even aware of the trending lucrative business. To crown the pass for this standard-degrading ineptitude, they demand that the old students who want to collect their certificates should pay for the departmental and faculty dues. It is beastly annoying and irreducibly defamatory to propose such demand by any department of any school to an alumnus. This is unobtainable in other colleges in the surrounding state. How could someone who has graduated for long and who, as a matter of fact, paid all those fees while in school be asked to pay for the stuffs again? Is he still a student of the school? It is morally imperative to bring down this hoisted flag of corruptive terms.
Lastly, the schools were previously known to have ethics and ethos to promote unarguable standards and spread sense of belonging among their working populace, both academic and nonacademic. In an attempt to bridge staff strength gap created by an irresponsive government some 12 years ago, some members of staff were recruited by the schools authorities on non-permanent basis, hoping that when the government gives signal for recruitment, they would be permanently converted. These are members of staff who perform the tedious duty of students accreditation. They have been employed for more than ten years with the stagnant payment of thirty to forty thousand naira from the schools’ IGR when in the clear cut of scheme of things; the cost of living has gone quadruple. They have no privileges like their counterparts who share the same degree certificates with them. This is a vile and decapitating arrangement that has reduced the dedicated staff citizens to slavish condition. For all those years that they have been wholeheartedly and faithfully serving the schools, scores of new members of staff have been employed on permanent basis while those within and of course, who are to be converted to full fledge members of staff with the same requisites and pay-rolled by the state government are left to their fate in the winds.
Looking into this identikit that fits the two colleges by this outgoing government and creating a lifetime opportunity for this category of workers in these schools in alliance with their respective governing councils will amount to serving God and embracing fairness because it is said that what is good for the goose should not be bad for the gander. The concerned bodies should travel on this strength to give these people a destination. The dimming sun is still enough to dry the cloth.
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