EXCLUSIVE: Adamawa Education Commissioner Reveals Reasons State Proscribed Health Institutions

… As Affected Institutions To Be Shut Down

The Commissioner of Education, Adamawa State, Dr Umar Garba Pella, has revealed why some health institutions in the state were proscribed last week.

Recall THE WHISTLER broke the story last week of how Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri, proscribed all schools of health in the state, and in a letter seen by THE WHISTLER, written by the Commissioner of Health to the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Health, only three (3) institutions are allowed to operate.

According to the commissioner, the only accredited health institutions in the state are: College of Health Technology, Mubi, Sa’adatu College of Health Science Technology, Mubi (private) and School of Health Technology, Mayo Belwa (private).

Speaking in an exclusive chat with THE WHISTLER on Monday, the Commissioner of education, Dr Pella said, the health institutions were proscribed because they were not accredited.

He said, “These are institutions that are expected to be tight with certain requirements before you set them, but we realised people are setting up anyhow like they are setting up shops, without getting the right pre-qualifications to set them up.”

Pella blamed the Ministry of Tertiary Institutions which was established in 2007 as the cause of all these.

“And this happened because people can walk to the Ministry of Tertiary Institutions at that time where there was a desk officer for licensing those schools who can just easily give them the licence to go and set up.

“And once they set up, they don’t care, they go ahead with academic programmes without proper investment. And even when they set it up, if they do the needed investment they’re expected to follow up with regulatory agencies both national and subnational level, to ensure that they have the right accreditation to maintain the standard and have the right accreditation.

“Most of them are unaccredidated by the regulatory agencies at both the national and subnational level,” the Commissioner said.

He noted that this calls for concern because most of the students trained under such institutions still fall back into the wider society and of course the primary health care centres where they are likely to work.

“So, if you hatch them wrongly, they will go into the filters wrongly and form a disaster for our people, because the School of Health Technology is a specialised institution that is expected to give us manpower in the primary health sector.

“That is why we decided to ensure that all accredited institutions are allowed to flourish so that those who don’t have accreditation have lost for now, unless they have the right accreditation to commence operation.

“This is all tailored to ensure that we have the right candidates operating the system and ensure that their institutions are up to task and providing the necessary infrastructure and manpower,” Pella noted.

Speaking about how many of these illegal institutions will be shut down, the Commissioner said he cannot tell precisely, but knows that the Ministry of Health is taking stock of all the necessary ones that have not met the requirements to operate, and the ultimate sanction is to close the institutions.

However, the Honourable Commissioner also highlighted that it is because of issues like these that the state government went further to restructure certain institutions within the state.

He said, “On the issue of proscribing unaccredited health institutions in the state, we realised that was even part of the concern we had with the way it was managed under the former ministry of tertiary education, we now thought that it’s better if it is supervised by the ministry of health.

“For instance you see the school of health and technology was supervised by the Ministry of Education, but you see they don’t have the expertise to supervise them, but because of the fact that it’s a school of health and technology it is now moved to Ministry of Health where it is expected that they have the expertise to ensure proper supervision and coordination.

“We are restructuring certain institutions in the state, and the restructuring is based on the need to ensure optimum performance from the institutions and also reduce the cost of governance and cost of running some of them.

“What we realised is that there used to be a Ministry for Tertiary Education separate from the Ministry of Education. And with this reform agenda, we realised, the best is to rationalise the ministries and perhaps, edge them under one ministry that will supervise and ensure proper coordination for maximum performance.

“So, now in Adamawa, we don’t have the Ministry of Tertiary Institution, we are only having the Ministry of Education with some of the institutions under the tertiary institutions now moved to the Ministry of Education.”

Pella mentioned that institutions like the Adamawa State University (ADSU), the College of Education(COE), the State Polytechnic (SPY) and the College of Agriculture are now all to be supervised by the Ministry of Education instead of the Ministry of Tertiary Institutions.

He also said the other specialised institutions were moved to their respective ministries of specialisation.