ishmeal you are a brothwer in the profession i see you reply my mail whenever i send one can we know each other the more? you can reach me here
emmigrant01@yahoo.co.uk or 08035695558 i will pleased to know you
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And for all that cares read this:
Lassa criticises Education Ministry's reform agenda
From Isa Addulsalami, Jos
FORMER Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Prof. Peter Lassa has said that the planned market economic policy of education for the country could not work because "it has never succeeded anywhere."
Lassa said that he was aware that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been pushing for world wide reform in education which focused on a market-based school system.
Lassa, who is a retired professor of Mathematics having spent 46 years in teaching, said that the proposed merger of polytechnics and colleges of education with the university system would not work, because each had a specific purpose to fulfill in society. He addressed a news conference in Jos recently.
According to him, polytechnics and colleges of education were two different institutions and were different from the university system. He insisted that each one had a specific objective and purpose and that polytechnic education was geared towards providing middle level manpower.
"This policy does not fit into our education system which is based on social services. This market-based policy has some political undertone and is inconsistent with the Federal Government policy on the Universal Basic Education (UBE).
"This market-based policy came after the World War II in Europe and North America as a neo-liberal policy, emphasising the deregulation of the economy, trade liberalisation and the dismantling of the public sector (such as education, health, social welfare). The neo-liberalism emphasises the privatisation of public provision of goods and services. The main aim of neo-liberalism is to put into question all collective structures capable of obstructing the logic of the pure market," he said.
According to him, "This is the policy that the new Ministry of Education wants to implement. This policy of market economy cannot work in our system of education, and it has not succeeded anywhere we know of. It has been disclosed that government discourse since 2001 had led to substantive shift in school policy toward economic responsiveness which creates a business agenda in education.
"From the look of things, Obasanjo's regime is putting education in the vanguard of social and political change. The government position is based on its commitment to United Nations membership to lay the foundation upon which they think an education superstructure could be built."
Lassa urged government not to tread the path of the market economy policy for the country's educational system "because this policy has never worked and cannot work for Nigeria in the present economic development. The present educational policy and Nigerian constitution which place education under concurrent legislative list requires the attention of all the tiers of government in this country."
and this as well
Poly, Varsity Merger Will Improve Education – IMSU VC
By Amby Uneze in Owerri, 12.05.2006
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You have been the Vice Chancellor for the past one year, what is your relationship with the students like and what challenges have you faced?
I am very pleased to have the responsibility of being the Vice Chancellor of this institution, the Imo State University. I considered my appointment a learning process and I stand to put the experiences I have gathered over the years to bear on the present job. I would say that the experience has been a very rewarding one.
hile I was a dean in Faculty of Business Administration, I had a kind of relationship with the students body. A lot of them, including the President and executives of the Students Union body were quite close to me. They came for one advice of the other. I didn’t know how it happened, but this relationship with them eventually turned in my favour when I was more or less campaigning for this position, to the extent that a lot of the students expressed some kind of solidarity around me, to ensure that I emerged as Vice Chancellor. So since I became Vice Chancellor, there has been that kind of instant cordial relationship.
Most universities complain of a lack of infrastructural facilities, while there has been a steady increase in the number of students admitted each year, how is your university addressing this problem?
This is the main problem in the education industry in the country. It is real. You have a situation where a class meant for 50 or 60 students has close to 200 to 300 students. But the founding fathers of this university wanted to provide a training facility for the teaming population of Imo youths. So there is a kind of conflict there. We have to be able, at least, to meet the objective of the founding fathers.
Unfortunately, the recent admission quota granted by Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC), actually l
took into consideration the dearth of facilities. We used to admit about 6, 000 students every year, but we have stepped down. The Imo State Government was gracious enough to extend to us the former Okigwe Road secretariat, so this will ease off the existing congestion.
These days, employers of labour have drawn a line between the university degree and the polytechnic’s Higher National Diploma (HND), preferring the former. How do you react to this?
This has been a recurring decimal in the Nigerian education system. If you recall by the year 1983 – 84, following the Cookey Commission report, there was a distinction that was created between the salaries of he various tertiary institutions. I think these emanated from the provisions of the policy of education in the country, because within the polity, there was a need to create various categories of manpower in the system; middle level manpower, high level manpower and the rest of them.
But of course, you must understand that the society is changing. I recall when the current President was a military Head of State, he tried to harmonize the graduates of the polytechnic with those of universities, but it did not work. The employers themselves sometime prefer some polytechnic graduates to university graduates in some professions. Even in the university here, there is an institutional organ called the congregation or the convocation. For you to be a member of the congregation, you should be a graduate and by the interpretation of the graduate, you have to be a degree holder. Because of that in the appointment of, say the Bursar, some accountants with HND are very good, some even become chartered accountants before university graduates, but you can not be a Bursar of the university with just HND, because if you do, you are no more qualified to be a member of the congregation. So such things are there.
Well the distinction can still be removed. This situation existed sometime in Britain. They looked at the curriculum of various institutions, modified them, up-graded the polytechnics to university status, to the extent that the polytechnics in Britain now offer B-tech, M-tech to Ph.D., so that in case of the lecturers, if you find yourself in the polytechnic, you can still remain there and become a professor. So it was done in such a way that the institutions could serve their primary role in the society, the role of producing technological manpower.
The danger in our system is that sometimes, we get carried away by credentials. When you set up a University of Technology, before you know it, the university will begin to offer degrees in medicine, management, even in education or that kind of stuff. For purposes of psychological balancing, it may be necessary and I want to state it here now; at the presidential forum which we attended very recently, in the Ministers’ presentation I think there is that proposal. As a matter of fact, they have even set up a Presidential committee to oversee the possibility of harmonizing the system. They are trying to experiment with Kaduna Polytechnic and Yaba College of Technology as city universities. So the polytechnic system is now gradually being phased out. They can now become either a college or department of universities that exist closely, like in the UK. This should improve the standard of education.
How has IMSU dealt with the endemic problems of cult activities and exam malpractice?
Very recently we attended a stakeholders meeting at Abuja, organized by the Senate Committee on Education in conjunction with the Exam Ethics. The essence of that was to see how we could fashion out, with the assistance of the lawmakers, a bill against cultism. We look forward to these. But within the university here I must tell you, we are fortunate that we have a very formidable anti-cult group called, "Peace on Campus" squad. They are para military in nature. There is an interface between that and the existing local security agencies. From the Senate’s point of view, any student that is apprehended in connection with cultism is to be expelled.
What about Exam Malpractice?
I wouldn’t like to dwell much on the issue but we are doing a lot to tackle exam malpractice in the university. Lately, the post -UME policy is one reform that will eventually check exam malpractice in the system because the crop of students we are getting from the post UME exam are the crop of students that are now ready to study. They know that they have to study to pass any exam. It is a gradual process, but it is working, It will also take care of cultism because those that are involved in cultism are those that are not prepared at all to study.
You stated in your vision that you will focus on manpower development. How far have you gone in this direction?
We have done quite a lot in this. There was this policy in the older universities where the best graduating student is adopted into the programme of Graduate Assistance, from there you can now groom them. I have implemented that approach since I came in. I have also opened a window for staff to attend no fewer than 15 international conferences. I know two went to Cambridge, three to some other universities, and a whole lot to North America and Continental Europe. And lately from January, I have sent close to 133 staff to conferences within the country.
Who is Prof. Innocent Okonkwo?
I am Innocent Chuka Okonkwo. I hail from Ezioha Amaifeke in Orlu L.G.A, attended Uli High School, in the then East Central State and now Anambra State. I proceeded to North America and had my first degree in Economics, with distinction at the St Thomas (Jesuit) University. I appeared consecutively in the Deans list and on graduation I was the second valedictarian of the University. I was awarded the University’s prestigious fellowship and on completion of my Masters programme in Economics, I proceeded to the Brighton, in the United Kingdom, where I obtained my Ph.D. in Industrial Economics. When I completed my Ph.D. programme, I came back to this country, first, the Federal Polytechnic, Idah; where I started my academic career, invited me and I eventually transferred to Imo State University at Okigwe. There I was appointed a senior lecturer, I got promoted from the Senior lecturer position to a professor. From there I became the Dean of the College of Business Studies and for a long time I remained in the Faculty of Business Administration until I contested for the Office of the Vice Chancellor.
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