ESUT medical students protest

The Senior Medical students of Enugu Sate University Teaching Hospital Park lane, Enugu, are gunning for a fresh crisis barely four months they resumed classes.

 They were before now banished  from the school without lectures for  over six months .

Many of the senior medical students  yesterday staged a peaceful protest against the management of the Institution in what they considered as moves to reduce the quality and  ethical standard of  School of medicine of the institution by merging higher and lower cadre  of the medical students into one class.

The protesters who are mostly in their  4th year session described as irony the move to merge year two medical students into a common class with them, stating the idea will shoot up the number of medical students in one class to about One Hundred and Twenty against the basic standard of not more than Fifty students  usually obtained under normal circumstances.

Some of the placards carried by the protesting students as they marched from the main gate of the Park lane hospital across Park Avenue street to their 2nd gate, which is very near to the former Polo Park junction reads,'We Say No To Merging',Medical Council of Nigeria,please intervene','We Spent One year and two months doing nothing'.  Please Governor Ugwuanyi intervene'

Some of the protesting students who talked to 'The Authority' on conditions of anonymity    expressed  disappointment with the ESUT Management decision and vowed that they must continue the protest the perceived injustice in a higher magnitude next time if the situation is not reversed with immediate.

Attempts by 'The Authority' to obtain the reason for this development from ESUT School of Medicine Management before filing this report proved abortive. The  provost,College of Medicine, ESUT, Professor A. I. Ugochukwu, was  not on seat when this Reporter visited his office to get his reactions.

The Public Relations Officer, PRO, of the institution, Mr Osita Ugwuoti, did not give any tangible reply to The Authority' several times a telephone call was put across to him for his response. He initially said he was driving and would call back  but never did so. He also did not reply to the text message sent to his phone up till  the time of filing this report.

The  Authority recalled that the entire Medical students of Enugu State University Teaching Hospital, Park lane, Enugu, were forcefully ejected from the School by the management in the Month of November 2015, with claims by the management that they want to renovate their hostels  ahead of the re accreditation exercise to be conducted by  the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria 

The Provost,School of Medicine, Professor A. I Ugochukwu denied the allegations that the students of forceful ejection of the students,using security agents in a chat with 'The Authority' He stated that the reason was  to ensure that the medical students are provided with a good and enabling environment to undergo their studies, at any given period, the Provost ESUT college of Medicine explained.

The Authority checks revealed that the renovation and re accreditation exercise took several months than projected, with adverse implication on the curriculum and academic calendar of medical students of the  institution.  Presently, the senior students are rejecting the idea of crashing the curriculum/ academic calendar through joint classes with their juniors. They are saying it is unethical against the decision of the management.