Anambra State Polytechnic, Mgbakwu, Awka-North Local Government Area, is yet to produce graduates who qualify for the National Youth Service Corps 16 years after inception, ANAMBRA PEOPLE reports.
This situation was revealed at the budget bilateral talks between the Anambra State House of Assembly Committee on Tertiary Education and officials of the Anambra State Polytechnic led by the head of the institution, Dr. Njideka Chiekezie.
Dr. Chiekezie said the polytechnic required aggressive funding to meet her accreditation requirements to enable the institution produce graduates who would also be enlisted in the one year compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.
Chiekezie, who took over the headship of the polytechnic recently, said the situation she met was not palatable at all and that it was not her making, but according to her, frantic efforts were being made to ensure that the students graduate and also go for National Youth Service Corps.
She emphasised that the polytechnic aggressively require accreditation of academic programmes to enable the students go for NYSC after graduation.
Chiekezie expressed deep concern that the HND programmes of the polytechnic were not accredited, a development which she said was the remote reason students the institution was not enrolled in the National Youth Service scheme.
According to her, there was need to set up the required blocks for the students to graduate and get enlisted into the NYSC scheme of the Federal Government, stressing that accreditation of programmes was the only solution to the age-long problem.
She said at the moment, budgets approved for the polytechnic only covered payment of salaries, overheads and similar items, but did not take care of accreditation of programmes because accreditation, according to her, was capital intensive and done as a separate budget.
She said: “In order for us to obtain this accreditation, it requires the uplifting of the infrastructures in the school. What we need is listed in our capital budget. So, if we see fund for accreditation, there will be a change in infrastructures.
“We need engineering workshops, classroom blocks and we also desire to introduce more courses in our school but because we don’t have enough buildings to accommodate these courses, we are handicapped. So we are in dire need of classroom blocks and other infrastructures in the polytechnic. “