The chairman, Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU), Federal College of Education (TECH) Bichi chapter, Malam Muhammad Salisu Yunusa, said the college is currently on the brink of collapse in the face of myriads of woes bedevilling it.
Speaking at a press conference in Kano, Tuesday, Yunusa stated that the college has never had it so bad in the last 30 years of its history, lamenting that learning and teaching were taking place under the most unbearable conditions.
He said academic infrastructure in the college were dilapidating due to lack of maintenance. Laboratories, workshops, and studios are not functioning optimally due to lack of equipment and consumables, adding that insecurity and lawlessness was alarming due to what he described as complacency of the current management.
He said: “Gentle men of the press, I wish to draw the attention of the general public and critical stakeholders, particularly the Federal Ministry of Education, the National Commission for Colleges of Education and the College’s Alumni Association to the torrents of complaints from our former students, lamenting the inability of the college to issue them their Teachers Registration Council and National Certificate in Education for 2014/2015/2016 academic session.
“Our great union considers this development as embarrassing and detrimental to the esteemed image and reputation of our great college. We see this as a serious negligence of duty on the part of the college management as an academic institution whose primary duty is the training of qualified teachers.
“If nothing is done on time to nip this unfortunate trend in the bud, the failure to issue TRCN certificates to our former students may be viewed by the general public as a corporate fraud.
“Our great union also wishes to bring to the attention of the general public and relevant stake holders, the alarming state of insecurity and lawlessness in our campus, a development which if left unchecked, constitutes a threat to academic activities and general peace.
“It may interest you to know that as at August 2017, the college management had incurred a debt stock amounting to about N80m being the accumulative sum of deductions from staff salaries that were not remitted to the College’s Staff Cooperative Society, before a part payment of N55m was made by the college after much pressure from stakeholders, leaving a balance of N25m which is yet to be settled till date,” he stated.
