By DENNIS UDOMA

The Rector of Federal Polytechnic, Ukana in Akwa Ibom, Prof. Balama Obomanu has said, he is working hard to make the institution a pace setter in the provision of technological, innovative and value oriented training to meet the man-power requirement for national development and beyond.

Prof. Obomanu said this in Uyo at the weekend, while reacting to a news article allegedly aired by Planet 101.1 FM, a local Radio Station operating in the state, that the school was enmeshed in management crisis and operating non accredited academic programmes.

Obomanu, who dismissed the news article by the station on May 14 and 15 as false and misleading said, the Polytechnic which was established in 2014 is not embroiled in any management crisis and is not running unaccredited academic programmes.

He explained that, the Polytechnic had in 2016 secured interim accreditation for the National Diploma in Computer Science and ND, Statistics which is expected to run for two years, while three batches of students had been admitted for the programmes.

Prof. Obomanu, in a press statement signed by the institution’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mr Manasseh Umoette and made available to our correspondent said:

‘‘For the avoidance of doubt, management wishes to state that, the Polytechnic is not having any management crisis whatsoever or run unaccredited academic programmes.

‘‘That poised to expand the scope of academic programmes, the management had invited the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) for accreditation/resource inspection/verification visitation. And NBTE via a letter TEB/ARO/F.23/Vol. I/X dated 8th May 2018, conveyed to the Polytechnic their readiness for the accreditation visit scheduled to hold from 23rd to 26th of May 2018.

‘‘That only last two weeks, a team from NBTE visited the institution for Mock Accreditation Exercise and were impressed by facilities on ground adding that, the Polytechnic was unarguably the fastest growing institution in terms of infrastructure and academic programmes among sister Polytechnics established in 2014’’.

Programes put forward by the Polytechnic for NBTE consideration it was gathered include; ND, Computer Science (Accreditation), ND, Statistics (Accreditation), ND, Science Laboratory Technology (Resource Verification), ND, Computer Engineering (Resource Verification), ND, Business Administration and Management (Resource Verification), ND, Civil Engineering (Resource Inspection), ND, Electrical Electronics Engineering (Resource Inspection), even as the management is leaving nothing to chance in adding seven more programmes to her menu.

The Rector enjoined members of the public to jettison the news article as any information contrary to the above was intended to mislead unsuspecting members of the public noting, ‘‘as an academic institution, we refuse to be distracted from the task of working hard to be a pace setter in the provision of technological, innovative and value oriented training to meeting the man-power requirement for national development and beyond’’.