OWERRI – Mrs Celestina Ijioma, the Provost, Alvan Ikoku Federal College of Education (AIFCE), Owerri, has appealed to the Federal Government to upgrade the school to a degree awarding institution.
Ijioma made the appeal during the Impact Assessment visit of the Minister of Education, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau to the college on Tuesday.
According to Ijioma, AIFCE is better equipped in terms of infrastructure and personnel than most autonomous degree awarding institutions.
“I would like to reiterate our appeal to the Federal Government to upgrade AIFCE to a Federal University of Education.
“We have the personnel, facilities and the experience; this college has awarded bachelor’s degrees in affiliation with the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) for the past 32 years.
“We have sadly continued to record loss of our staff to the universities. In spite of their academic achievements, they cannot be promoted to the rank of professors in the college.
“Yet, they have the same qualifications, publications and scholarship with their colleagues in the university’’, she said.
The provost added that some of AIFCE’s staff members that left for the universities were accepted as full professors while others got promoted within one or two years of migration.
Responding, Shekarau, who was represented by Mrs Viola Onwuliri, the Minister of State for Education, said that the request for the upgrade of AIFCE had been made previously.
Shekarau said the quest to upgrade the institution which recently celebrated its golden jubilee, could not be ignored due to its contributions to the education sector.
“We will build on what we are doing today to ensure that our collective dreams are met.’’
The minister also inaugurated the Special Education blocks and inspected the Micro-Teaching Laboratory and the ICT building with 600 workstations built by TETFund. (NAN)
