Anthony Owan Enoh, a Professor and Vice-Chancellor of the Cross River University of Technology, CRUTECH, informed sources in the institution say, walked out in anger, during a meeting with the Emil Inyang led CRUTECH Governing Council, this past Wednesday, in circumstances not unrelated to a flurry of questions that the Governing Council wanted to see answered, www.calitown.com, can inform. Enoh’s decision to walk out on the Council stalled the meeting as Council members later filed out also in what one observer in CRUTECH described as “a progressive stalemate that will hasten CRUTECH’s retrogression”.
It is believed that the Council was uncomfortable with the finance/expenditure position of the institution and sundry issues, insisting on knowing why a few things have not been properly done by the VC and his team. Again, the Council was uncomfortable that even though it was visible that facilities in the four campuses of the institution (Calabar, Obubra, Ogoja and Okuku) have been stretched to breaking point, authorities of the institution appear driven more by what can be earned from school fees, as a priority admission consideration, than appropriate facilities on the ground. Some members of the Council are thought to be quite irked that a student population approaching 15, 000, across the four campuses, has just a little over 500 academic staff, teaching and supervising research in conditions that are very awful.
When www.calitown.com visited the Calabar campus of the institution in the course of this story, we confirmed that the institution has an electricity crisis and relies exclusively on public power supply for power generation. The engines of the giant generators in the Calabar campus, we were further informed, have not cranked to life in a while owing to the inability of the school administration to purchase diesel and make money available for routine maintenance of the generators. Several students crammed together in very hot classrooms, without electricity, were seen enduring torrid times during lectures in the institution. The case is no different in other campuses outside Calabar, our investigation confirmed.
But sources inside the VC’s office think the Governing Council “should find out from the Cross River State Government while CRUTECH is not adequately funded instead of behave like they can just walk into the institution and bully the VC. The answers to most of the questions they are asking can only be answered at the Ministry of Education and we are sure most of them are very friendly with Goddy Ettah, the Education commissioner”. At press time, we were yet to be informed on whether the meeting will be reconvened or if the Council and the VC have buried the hatchet.
