IMT Enugu students flee campus over school fees!

Student population at the Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu, has reduced due to mass departure of its students to other polytechnics and tertiary institutions.

Investigations revealed that the student left because of the increase in tuition fees, which the state government failed to reduce despite several pleas and protests.

The current school fees are pegged at N49, 300 per old student. Returning Higher National Diploma students as well as those admitted for Odinary National Diploma I are required to pay N65, 000 each.

Before now, old students paid N19, 000, while new and returning students paid N28, 000.

This development, a campus photographer, Uchenna Okechukwu, said, “has led to scanty number of students in OND I and HND I lecture theatres,” whereas exams are to commence by the last week in June 2012.

“When most of these students come to collect their pictures from my stand, they always tell me that they have found admission into a private polytechnic, OSISATECH, here in Enugu; or Federal Polytechnic in Oko, Anambra State; or even Akanu Ibiam Federal Polytechnic, Unwana, Ebonyi State and some other places,” Okechukwu said.

When our correspondent visited the school, only four students were seen receiving lectures in OND 1 class of the Department of Public Admission; two in Estate Management (OND I); and 11 in Mass Communication (OND I).

However, when a top admission worker (names withheld) opened the admission file for checking, the record showed that out of 65 persons who were originally admitted to study Public Administration, only seven of them have paid the school fees and were fully registered.

The ratio of students who have paid in Estate Management (OND I) as against the number admitted stood at 6:55, which means that six students out of 55 admitted had paid. In the same level of the Department of Mass Communication, only 13 out of 68 had paid.

Reacting, the state government, through the Governor Sullivan Chime’s Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Chukwudi Achife, said, “Well, there is nothing government can do about it.”

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