22 June 2019
As an academic department set to train and raise qualified print and electronic journalists (reporters and broadcasters), PR practitioners, advertisers, film makers, photojournalists and graphic artists, CRUTECH Mass Comm. Department lacks functional Radio and Television studios to enhance effective broadcast education and research learning by lecturers and students.
The reason is broadly the dwindled resources/infrastructure dearth caused by the poor funding of the University by its proprietor – the CRS government. However, the issue with the aforementioned department can partly be narrowed to its lack of transmitter for students practicals in broadcast education or broadcasting courses, as experienced by their equals in other Universities offering similar programme or course of study.
History, however, informs us that part of the borrowed N250M that was allegedly spent on the much boasted 2015 CRUTECH – NUC Accreditation exercise conducted during then Prof A. Owan Enoh's administration as the immediate past VC , was meant to equip the department.
Precisely, we are told that the total amount of money allotted for the contract procurement of equipment for the exercise in the department was the sum of N10 M,. That amount included the purchase/mounting of a new transmitter that is yet to arrive from abroad since 2015.
Sources close to the "middle man" in the contract to oversee the purchase and mounting of the transmitter disclosed that most of the supplied equipment were sub standard, and the transmitter purchase was a big scam, as no such thing equipment was ordered from abroad as claimed. Instead, it was a borrowed refurbished CRBC old transmitter that died on arrival, after it came through the back door to camouflage the NUC accreditation team, staff and students as though it were brand new from overseas.
Consequently, the department (after being "Nicodemusly accredited" to run fully for 5 years by NUC) , churns out half baked students in broadcast education as its radio and TV studios now reserve as evidence of lost glories, with unhappy technologists that find it difficult to bear the pains of being forced to lax duty for lack of equipment to organise students practicals. What an Omen?
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Holyns Hogan writes from Calabar, Nigeria
