A cross session of Students of Edo State School of Nursing, yesterday shut the institution campus indefinitely over withdrawal of accreditation.
The protesting students who brandished placards marked with various inscriptions, also caused traffic gridlock across some parts of Benin metropolis.
They listed shortage of qualified teachers, alleged foisting of a new school principal and non-accreditation of the school which was established over five years ago.
Vice President Students Union Government (SUG) of the school, Marris Osadolor who spoke for the group at the secretariat of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Edo State Council, gave insight on the issues and accused the state government of transferring the principal of the state school of midwifery to head their school and insisted that they wanted a nurse to head their school.
Osadolor accused the State Ministry of Health of being economical with the truth about the status of the school.
“Until the government restores our accreditation and give us a new principal, the school will not open and that is the reason we are protesting. They (the government) assured us that they are going to do something about our accreditation, we don’t have enough lecturers, no school bus as promised and we are demanding that these be restored. The few lecturers we have are just managing a lecturer to three to four courses, we lecture ourselves too and we don’t want that anymore”
“They should send should down somebody neutral to us and not the principal of the school of midwifery becoming the principal of the school of nursing, we don’t want that. What we want now is how to get our accreditation and not changing principals from school to school.
The State commissioner for health, Dr (Mrs) Aihanuwa Eregie could not be reached for comment.
However,an official in the Ministry said: “The principal was sent there in acting capacity because their substantive principal retried few days ago and with time, a substantive principal will be appointed. But in any case, what is their interest about who becomes their principal? Their responsibility to go and study in the school”
