Medical students at the Kogi State University, Anyigba have protested the lack of action after the five year old non-accreditation of Medicine in their school.
The students who are of the College of Medicine at KSU stormed the Senate building of their school to protest the situation.
EduCeleb.com recalls that since the College became operational in October 2012, students still studying in it had not been able to join their colleagues in writing professional examination to qualify them for clinical training in the teaching hospital.
In a bid to solve the problem, the Yahya Bello-led Kogi State Government set up a committee in December 2016 to work within six weeks and give them feedback. But the committee was reported to have worked for 12 months. This had not had much effect on the status of the medical programme in the state university.
The committee, which submitted its report to the State Executive Council recommended that the government chose to upgrade and remodel the facilities at the Medical School in Anyigba.
This, students felt was unbecoming of a government that had their interests at heart. The students, who spoke on the condition of anonymity mentioned that rather than recommending the Federal Medical Centre in Lokoja, the government “decided to go for an upgrade of an ill-staffed, unequipped and structurally backward diagnostic hospital in the town of the University for selfish reasons”.
“The state has been unable to start anything on the site despite approval of the budget which sits at a wooping 1.7billion Naira,” a student said.
To address the problem, the students cited schools currently using Federal Medical Centres, demanding that the government did the same.
In the words of one of them, “Ebonyi State University, Gombe State University, and even Afe Babalola University which is a private university use Federal Medical Centres.
“If a private university can use the Federal Medical Center, then the state university does not have any reason to insist on using a diagnostic hospital that has no hope of upgrade,” he said.
The protesting medical students demanded that they were addressed by the Vice Chancellor on the plan the school had for them.
But the VC was not available to address them throughout their protests, as he was said to be outside the state on an official assignment.
They decried what they described as negligence, which they had experienced from the institution and the state government since they were admitted.
EduCeleb.com reports that there are three sets of medical students in the Medical School which have had their academic sojourn stagnated. Two of them are still in 200level (A and B) while the other remain in 300 level.
An earlier measure by the government was to sponsor the transfer of 25 medical students to other universities to complete their medical training. The students were distributed to Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, and the University of Ilorin, Ilorin.
The students said that sets of students have not been able to write their first professional examination as consultants were running away from the school, demanding that the Federal Medical Center in Lokoja be used temporarily as their teaching hospital.
Efforts to reach the state’s Commissioner for Education, Mrs Rosemary Osikoya were unsuccessful as she was not available as at press time.
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[…] that students of KSU Medical School had earlier in the week embarked on protests over the five year long accreditation challenge. They demanded action toward the restoration of the […]