'Cold War' Brews In UNICAL... As Students Call For Removal Of Director

‘Cold War’ Brews In UNICAL … As Students Call For Removal Of Director

 

 Students of the Institute of Public Policy and Administration (IPPA), University of Calabar (UNICAL) have threatened to take to the streets over what they alleged as oppression and intimidation of students by the Director of the institute, Dr. Felix Akpan.

 

Our Correspondent reliably gathered that the students who are offering Diploma courses in Public Administration, Personnel management, local government administration, among others have been in a cold war with the Director of the institute  over issues bothering on results.

 

 According to the aggrieved students, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the records of some of their colleagues who had paid school fees before and after examinations were not delivered early to the institute  as a proof of payment hence, the withholding of their results by the institute.

 “We paid school fees and our results were not computed even when we have shown receipt of payment…

…On account of not seeing our results, the Director will force us to write re-sit examinations and complains to several quarters have not yielded any positive response…

…2011 set who have long graduated, their results have not been approved even those who had gotten admission suffered the same fate.

“There has been so much delay in the release of examination results and this is because of the insensitivity and lukewarm attitude of the Director towards the affairs of the institute.”

Similarly, a 200 level female Diploma Student of Personnel Management also indicted Dr. Akpan for allegedly collecting “illegal fees ranging from five hundred naira in the name of departmental clearance”.

The students also alleged that the Director had deliberately refused to allow students of the institute to form an association which could act as platform to challenge certain illegalities.

According to a 200 level female student, “they are been oppressed by the Director who have been rejecting and destroying exams scripts of students who paid fees but whose records were not delivered early to IPPA.

“There has been non-release of results leading to denial of direct entry admission and no transcript from the registry because our results are not there  and the Director has been boasting of having Vice-chancellor as god-father and therefore above the law. This is leadership recklessness”.

In a telephone conversation, Dr. Felix Akpan said, “I took over as Director of the institute in October last year and whoever is telling you that trash is telling you nonsense. Since I took over, I have been trying to clean up the mess in that place and this is the first time the students are seeing their results being published. I am trying to get all the lecturers to publish results.

“Diploma is supposed to be a two-year programme and we just finished second semester exams last month and now said the students who failed to write re-sit so that we can integrate them with results of this semester. Just last Friday, the students said they did not see one result and I had to go and get the lecturer to submit that result and publish it.
“Students are writing their re-sits and there are no issues. All these issues you are raising I don’t know where you got it from”

 Meanwhile, students of the institute have sent an SOS to the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof James Epoke to intervene without any delay.