BY Tony Edike

ENUGU-Rector of the Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, Enugu, Professor Edwin Onyeneje, explained Wednesday that the action taken recently by the National Board for Technical Education, NBTE, against the institution was temporary withdrawal of accreditation and not total closure of the institution.

He admitted that IMT had a problem of enrolment with NBTE but declared that the institution had not committed any other offence than the issue of over enrolment which the authorities had decided to check.

Professor Onyeneje, who briefed newsmen in Enugu on the recent development, said: “The way they have decided to check it is to have our accreditation withdrawn. So it is clear that we understand it that it is the accreditation that has been withdrawn not that the institution was shut down or clamped down. That is not true. Other normal activities are still going on within the institute.”

The NBTE had said that the measure followed “unusual presentation of large number of graduates for the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, mobilization by the institute as reported to it by the directorate of the NYSC.”

The rector, however, explained that the implication of the accreditation being withdrawn was that the admission process for new students would be put on hold until the matter is resolved while those graduates who were waiting to be mobilized for Youth Service would also be put on hold until the matter is sorted out.

“It is a gradual process because we cannot throw overboard those who are already enrolled in the programme and I believe by the time we come to two, three, four years when those of them who had already come in would go, the issue of over enrolment will not be a thing again in IMT.

“Like I said the matter was traced far back before my administration but I suspect that it is because of the circumstances of the moment that led to it. One is the pressure coming from the society, a number of people coming out from secondary school looking for Institutions to attend and IMT is prominently positioned in this part of the country; being a regional Polytechnic there is no way you can avoid this pressure.

“Also as a State Polytechnic the state government finds it very difficult to fully subvent the cost of running because it is capital intensive and in order to increase internal revenue to complement the effort of government there is an indirect pressure to take students.

“We have spoken in so many fora of the need for the federal government to come to the aid of State Polytechnics because we produce manpower for this very nation; no matter the percentage; the states are not all that buoyant to take care of some of these things.”