In this context, as long as the student is well informed, its almost unthinkable for a student to test the tolerance of the authorities unless in some rare cases where some students are careless and fall prey to the claws of such punishment. It is unfortunate to know that most students are made to believe that they have no right in the school environment and any show of resistance could lead to the short stay of such student/s but we all know students are humans and deserve equal rights both in and out of the school campus.
The case I bring forth is that of some students of Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State (FUTMinna) who are on the verge of repeating just concluded 2013/2014 academic session as a result of negligence of duty on the part of staff of the aforementioned university. The Management team of Professor Musbau Akanji has to be commended for the measures being implemented to make the aforementioned university to be one of the few in Nigeria and Africa to be reckoned with but are some of these measures not to be gradually sown into the material of school system?
The Federal University Of Technology, Minna, Niger State has been in existence for awhile so have different Vice Chancellors come and gone with their philosophies which either has been improved upon or discarded due to reasons known to successors and which would greatly affect the lives of Prospective and old students of this University.
One of the systems that exists in the University is the traditional registration of courses for a new session which is done manually and submitted to respective heads of departments, level advisers and Deans of Schools for acknowledgement and record keeping. Students accept whatever decision of The senate by default in this part of the world but the dissemination of the details of the deliberation sometimes is haphazard and students tend to rely on hearsay approach.
Towards the end of the First Semester of the 2013/2014 academic session, news broke that the senate had decided to punish students who didn’t register required courses for this 2013/2014 session on their various student portals with the threat of expulsion but on the plea of some powers that be the students were asked to submit a letter of condonation on which the senate would deliberate upon and issue the affected students with option to defer the session in question hence forfeiting all work done in 2013/2014 session. Justice knows no face when one goes against the law but when the quarters that ought to guide the affected students are culprits of negligence of duty aren’t the students used as scapegoats instead of the real people who ought to be punished?
Most of the students affected by this ill-fate will concur that the respective heads of departments that were informed about the preference of the online course form receipt to the traditional manual/paper form didn’t pass on the message to the students and the exalted heads turned around and accused students of failing to do what was ‘Right’.
There is an obvious disconnect between the student and ‘school’ but does the helpless student have to suffer the negligence of duty by a few individuals or does the school authorities review the mode of operation, mode of information dissemination because the Student Union Government is almost crippled and the school’s comfortable medium of using the Campus Radio is proving to be ineffective as so many students are in the wild about the existence of such media.
As we read, the final year graduands who were enthusiast about rounding-up their course of study in Federal University of Technology Minna, Niger State are on the verge of repeating a full session not forgetting some students who are on the Mandatory Student Industrial Training Program who would automatically be demoted to 300 level.
We once again plead with School authority to be lenient on their decision to have students defer the 2013/2014 session.
Please lend a voice to this cause.
Thank you.
Student
Federal University of Technology,
Minna, Niger State.
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