The National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has issued a 7-day ultimatum for immediate investigation into the crisis rocking the Osun State Polytechnic (OSPOLY), Iree.
The National President of the students’ body, Comrade Akinteye Babatunde, in a statement on Thursday, said the call for investigation was not to witch-hunt any individual nor driven by personal vendetta against administrators.
According to him, “We are driven strictly by a profound commitment to a sound pedagogical system, the uncompromised welfare of our students, and the preservation of a healthy academic environment.
“Consequently, the national leadership of NANS hereby issues a strict 7-day ultimatum for independent moderating bodies to move onto the campus and commence a thorough investigation.
“Our call is strictly for the purpose of saving the school, restoring its lost glory, and correcting what urgently needs to be corrected.
“If a transparent, independent investigation by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), ASUP National, TETFUND, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), and the Department of State Services (DSS) is not actively commenced within the next 7 days, the national leadership of NANS HQ will completely relocate to the OSPOLY campus to take over the struggle physically and shut down all administrative operations.
“The ICPC and DSS must conduct a total forensic financial audit into the pipelines of forced student levies, extortionist receipt schemes, the missing TETFUND ICT allocations, and the highly controversial portal transition that has locked away vital student records. Our relocation will be total, and we will remain on the ground until every administrative anomaly is rectified”, the student said.
NANS explained that when an administration reduces an institution to a mere revenue-collection centre while starving students of knowledge and staff of motivation, it triggers a catastrophic multiplier effect that devalues the overall quality of tertiary education nationwide.
“In a sane environment, the management and the local staff structures would have immediately cleared the air and addressed the public.
“Shockingly, the whole Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) could not even say a single thing or state these heavy allegations levelled against their own members.
“Is the silence of ASUP and the management not a clear sign that all these allegations are completely true? By remaining silent for over a week, they have tacitly accepted guilt, which is why we must call upon independent bodies to step in immediately and save the school from total collapse”, NANS said
The students noted that the recent public outburst from the student body was the boiling over of long-standing, deeply entrenched frustration that directly threatens academic standards.
“For semesters, students have quietly endured a compromised academic system where lecturers simply refuse to enter classrooms to teach, leaving students completely abandoned while being aggressively extorted for continuous payments, handouts, and endless administrative paper receipts.
“This systemic decay reached a dangerous peak during the recent Computer-Based Test (CBT) examinations, exposing severe administrative and technical incompetence.
“The management mandated a digital exam format without providing a single computer or a reliable campus network infrastructure, forcing students onto a broken mobile portal where standard Android phones glitched completely, leaving only iPhone users capable of writing the test.
“This technical segregation caused a dangerous physical stampede where multiple students fainted from exhaustion, entirely overwhelming the campus medical centre.
“Beyond this immediate infrastructure collapse, we are deeply alarmed by heavy student allegations pointing directly at systematic certificate and exam manipulation, which compromises the very life wire of academic records.
“This severe technological failure raises a massive red flag that requires immediate financial scrutiny from external funding bodies. We are calling on the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) to swing into action and move into OSPOLY to audit and confirm exactly what this management has been using its allocations for”, NANS said.
