The students of the Southern Nigeria Institute of Innovate Technology, Ifewara in Osun State had set the private institution ablaze over some courses offered by the school which they had just discovered had not been accredited.
The Punch reports that some of the students had turned violent on Sunday evening, with them vandalising the school’s property, after they had found out that some of their courses were not accredited by the National Board for Technical Education.
Buildings and vehicles within the school's premises had reportedly been torched by the enraged students.
Some of the students who had been interviewed by Punch correspondents had revealed that the students directly involved had begun the violent acts.
Speaking via telephone, one of the students said:
“We had our matriculation on Friday and some students said they were told that their courses had not been accredited. This led to a serious protest and they destroyed so many things before they set the school on fire.
“They chased us, female students, away and stole our laptops, phones and other things before they set the female hostel on fire. They burnt everywhere.
“The protest started on Sunday evening and continued as early as 7am this morning. Peace was restored to the school only when policemen came today.”
Surprisingly, the Chairman Governing Council of SNIIT, Dr. Kola Christwealth, had denied the claims of unaccredited courses, revealing that he blamed the actions of the students on ignorance stemming from a lack of understanding of the school programs.
Dr. Christwealth added that he had been yet to visit the school to assess the level of damage done by the rampaging students as of the time he had been reached.
He also revealed that the school had encouraged the students to take professional examinations relevant to their programmes without with any extra tuition charges were ignorant of the benefits.
“Our courses were accredited by NABTE. We are only encouraging our students to enroll for professional exams. We did not charge them anything for preparing them for the exams but they will only pay to register for the examinations.
“The payment is to the professional bodies like ICAN, NIM and other. They are not going to pay us but some of them said we should be the ones to pay for them.
“They will get our diplomas alongside the professional certificates and this will make them employable and to be better than most of their mates elsewhere but they are ignorant.
“Their grouse simply is that the school should pay for their professional exams and we did not make it mandatory for them. It is optional; you can decide to get only our diploma without writing any professional exam.”
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