“I stayed at home for three years due to a lack of funds.” My parents desired education but were helpless to achieve it.
“I was able to complete my secondary school education because my father was unable to pay the fees.” I won’t blame him because he was strong and agile until 2022, when he was involved in an accident that rendered him fully wheelchair-bound.
“Despite numerous requests, my father refused to allow my mother to work until the accident, thanks to that drunk driver.”
“After the accident, my mother obtained loans and began a small business, but it was insufficient to feed a large family.” There was no way to gain an education. But I had promised my father that I would graduate from law school.
“So I started working hard, doing various jobs to raise funds.”
“I frequently went to construction sites to assist bricklayers, and I also pushed wheelbarrows in the popular Ojota market.”
“After more than five years of hard work, my friend, Saheed, told me about Havard, and my small inquiry was to see if my savings would secure me admission to study law here (Harvard).”
“Having confirmed that, I came here, only to learn from various people that we had been duped.”
“I am now in my second year. If this is true, I will be the world’s largest loser, which will be difficult for my mother to accept.”
This was Aina Jide’s narration when our reporter approached him earlier this week in the Obada area of Abeokuta, the host community to the controversial – Havarde College of Science, Business and Management Studies, a polytechnic where students can study law, pharmacy, nursing, and other professional courses.
This media learned via random interviews that locals are unsure if the institution is a polytechnic or a university. The pupils are as perplexed as the residents.
Residents, on the other hand, were pleased with the facelift given to commercial operations in the popular Obada, thanks to the large number of students who live in the region.
The school stated that it awards National Diploma (ND) and Higher National Diploma (HND) certifications in an online advertisement.
However, the same polytechnic claimed in the same advertisement that it offers B.Sc conversion programs for HND holders, raising questions about whether the school now has NUC approval to award degrees or was accredited by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE).
A school kid, who refused to disclose his name for fear of scolding, spoke from the ‘pool’ of his bewilderment when he told a media correspondent, “Bros, I really do not know what to believe anymore, honestly, I am frustrated.”
He said, “We learnt that Havarde was an affiliate of Olabisi Onabanjo University.”
When asked the range of their tuition fee, he said law students pay N195,000 yearly as school fees, while those in the nursing department pay N130,000 yearly.
Findings
But Investigation by this media showed that the proprietor of the institution, Dr Oluwatosin Adebayo, severed ties with OOU many years back.
Thorough checks on both NUC and NBTE websites showed that the school was yet to be accredited as a university.
In a 2021 directory of the NBTE, Harvarde college was seen among the list of specialised institutions offering accredited programmes.
The college got permission of the NBTE to offer four courses which include: Accountancy, Business Administration, Mass Communication and Computer Science all for National Diploma (ND) only.
According to the NBTE, the accreditation ought to expire in October, 2022.
Although not confirmed, a staff of the institution who preferred to be anonymous, told DAILY POST that the school got approval to run a monotechnic with the earlier mentioned courses.
This reporter, however, discovered that, against the four courses accredited by the NBTE, the school now runs about 30 courses, including criminology, law, nursing, among others.
Management reacts
Responding to DAILY POST enquiry, the proprietor of the school, Dr Oluwatosin Adebayo, debunked the allegation, insisting that the school was duly registered by the federal government.
“We cannot come to Abeokuta and be doing something illegal. If anything is not clear to you, please come to us to get clarification and not spread something that is untrue.
“We used to be under OOU before but today, we don’t have any affiliation with OOU again. We can’t continue to serve one person for life,” he stated.
He further noted that what he described as a rumour against the school emanated from rusticated students of the institution.
According to him, “I think what caused all these rumours is because we do send students away from here. If after a year your GP is less than 1.00 or you misbehave, we will send you away.
“We can’t harbour such students around us but most of them will not go home and what they will now do is to embark on unnecessary rumour.”
Although the proprietor claimed that university courses on their campuses are on affiliation, he refused to mention the name(s) of the mother institution they are affiliated to.
When asked what the school awards to students, Adebayo said, “We have ND, we have HND but we don’t have the power to issue Bsc on our own, so we have to affiliate. But we have accreditation up to HND level.”
Meanwhile, thousands of students, just like Jide, are currently in the school, paying huge sums, in pursuit of academic certificates.
Credit: Daily Post