Federal College of Dental Technology and Therapy, Enugu has dissociated itself from a statement in circulation, portraying the college as already possessing full authorisation to run independent degree programmes.
Purveyors of the controversial statement had acted on the recent approval granted by the National Universities Commission (NUC) for the commencement of degree programmes in the college in affiliation with the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO) to circulate a misleading statement not signed by the college with the insinuation.
Reacting to the statement, the Head of Public Relations of the College, Omololu Ogunmade, in a statement Tuesday, distanced the institution from the circulation of the statement.
According to him, mischievous elements whose mission is to truncate the current steps being taken by the institution towards securing NUC’s authorisation to transform into a university were behind the circulation of the controversial statement.
Titled “Disclaimer,” the statement by Ogunmade vehemently denied circulating the statement and asked the general public to ignore it.
The statement read: “Our attention has been drawn to a statement purportedly circulated by us with misleading information about the recent approval granted by the National Universities Commission (NUC) for the commencement of undergraduate programmes in our institution.
“The statement being circulated by some mischievous elements was perceived to have portrayed us as an already independent and authorised degree awarding institution whereas an NUC letter conveying the approval only envisaged that our College would run the degree programmes in affiliation with the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO).
“It is against the background of the approval conveyed by NUC’s letter, signed by the Director of Academic Planning, Dr. N.B. Salihu, that we issued a clear statement stating that the regulatory body had given us the nod to proceed with our degree programmes in the College premises but in collaboration with FUTO.
“In our commitment to defer the power to award degrees for the academic programmes to FUTO (because we do not have that power and requirements yet to unilaterally award degrees), we stated in our own statement without any fear of equivocation that the approved degree programmes would only be run in College premises with FUTO as our mentor.
“But the other statement circulated by mischief makers listed academic programmes approved by NUC and proceeded to create the impression that we were authorised to independently run the programmes.
“We hereby state that this controversial statement was not circulated by us and we urge the general public to ignore it and keep faith only with the statement signed by us as published in national dailies and posted below.”
