Abia health college gives lecturers certificate upgrade ultimatum
The management of Abia State College of Health and Management Sciences, (ASCOHMAT) has given its lecturers with academic qualification below a master’s degree up to June 2022 to upgrade or be fired.
Prof. Lawrence Chigbu, Rector of ASCOHMAT, said this in Aba on Thursday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).
“There is a decision that we took to the effect that any lecturer without a Master’s Degree will soon cease to be our lecturer.
“As soon as I came and found out that even people who had third class degrees were lecturing here, we stopped them immediately.
“High National Diploma (HND) cannot teach HND, we stopped that immediately. And we gave them up to June 2022 to upgrade or be dropped.
“Any academic staff of this institution without a Master’s Degree till June 2022, will be dropped”, he said.
The rector also said that a human face is being applied by the management in issues like the upgrade of lecturers because of the difficulty in recruiting quality teachers.
He said when he was appointed the rector of the college he became aware of the enormity of the challenge of repositioning the institution.
“That was when I drafted a working document I called “my mandate” which the current governing board adopted and we started working on its content.
“And of all the things listed in that working document we have done every other thing except convocation which is what is left to be done.
“We ensured that students have a conducive learning environment and that workers’ welfare is a priority. So since I came, there has been no crisis of any sort here.
“We pay salaries regularly with government support and for the past 12 years there hasn’t been any promotion and proper placement of staff members but we have done it this time around,” Chigbu said.
He said the school lacked accreditation for the past eight years but that from Aug. 2 to Aug 8, 2021; it was able to do accreditation for 14 programmes.
According to Chigbu, it is only Public Health course, which was newly introduced into the college and was yet to pass through the accreditation process and expressed hope that it would accredited soon.
“ We have approached relevant professional bodies for the accreditation of professional courses such as pharmacy technician and medical laboratory and we are hopeful that they will come soon,” he said. (NAN)
