KADUNA POLY IN ADMISSION MESS, ASUP VOWS TO UNCOVER SCAM

The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP), Kaduna Polytechnic, has threatened fire should the school sweep under the carpet, audit report of the 2009/ 2010 admission exercise. The report was the result of the committee set up to investigate alleged admission racket and those involved said to have made over N40 million from the nefarious act.

Candidates are usually admitted from the departments, to the colleges before final ratification by the school authorities. Apart from that, some candidates could also get admission through the Rector's list, which most often than not is the prerogative of the Rector, Dr. Danjuma Isa.

However, Daily Sun's investigations revealed that about 1,672 students were admitted without due process, as they were neither admitted through the departments nor the Rector's list. Yet they were published, as duly admitted on the school's website.

This made the Rector, to set up a committee to review the whole exercise. The committee discovered that the admission list from 31 out of the 33 departments of the school, was inflated above the approved and required limit.

In the report signed by the chairman and secretary of the committee, M.J Mohammed and Zayyana I. Kukasheka respectively, a copy of which was exclusively obtained by Daily Sun, the committee observed that 'in conducting the exercise, the committee used departmental admission submissions as approved by Kaduna Polytechnic Admission Panel as 60 percent ratio and Rector's approved admission as 40 percent ratio and the printed admission list downloaded from Kaduna Polytechnic Edu-Portal as the committee's working documents.

'On the admission lists, those admitted based on departmental approved submissions were marked 'D' while those admitted based on Rector's approval were marked 'R.' It was discovered that some candidates appeared on the admitted lists, but they were neither in the departmental nor Rector's approved lists. Such candidates were marked with asterix on the printed admission lists.'

The committee observed that some names were printed more than once in the printed admission list, a situation the committee noted showed that something was fundamentally wrong with the package used in programming the admission list. It added that 'this is because, if the programme was correct, it would have recognized only one name and number per candidates and reject any repetition. Moreover, the printed admission lists were not serialized.'

Daily Sun's findings further revealed that during the 2009/2010 admission exercise, about 4,286 students were admitted. Of this number however, only 2,614 students' admission followed due process, while 1,672 students were said to have been fraudulently admitted, with the College of Business and Management Studies having the highest number of fraudulently admitted students, followed closely by the College of Administrative Studies and Social Science.

ASUP has vowed to pursue the matter to its logical conclusion, insisting that those involved, no matter how highly placed must be made to face the full weight of the law.

Its position is contained in its resolutions reached at the end of one of its congresses recently. In the resolutions, a copy of which was obtained by Daily Sun, ASUP among other things, called on the management to as a matter of urgency and necessity, set up 'a full fledged investigation into the alleged case of admission scam, so that fraudsters be made to face the full wrath of the law. The reputation of Kaduna Polytechnic built over the years is at stake.

'The union wishes to state categorically that we will stop at nothing within our legal confines to press for these issues and take them up with higher authorities if management in its usual way decides to treat any of them with levity. The institution is on the verge of total collapse and therefore, as major stakeholders, we will not sit and watch a catastrophe that is about to happen to it.'

The School's Mass Communication Department, through one of its training magazines, did an expose, on the fraudulent admission exercise. Rather than address the issue, the school's management quickly set up a panel to try the students and some of their lecturers for 'daring' to pick up such a news item.

Although the panel has since concluded its investigations, as at the time of filing this report, it is yet to make its findings public. When contacted, Halilu Usman, of the Information and Protocol Division of Kaduna Polytechnic, it is not a panel, it is a committee set up to investigate the alleged admission irregularity, and not racketeering.

'The committee is currently working on the matter, and as soon as it is through, the findings will be made public, he said.'

Speaking on the fate of the students who blew the whistle on the matter, Usman said, 'it is not as if the students leaked the alleged admission irregularity, they lifted the story from a newspaper and published it in their own journal, so they did not do anything spectacular. In fact I was a member of the committee that investigated the students, and we recommended that they did not do anything different from the newspaper publication. But it is left for the department either to punish them or not.'

The days ahead in the Polytechnic would be stormy and intriguing, as ASUP, led by Comrade Yahya Bida Mustapha, has vowed to get to the root of the matter.