Makinde promises to resolve LAUTECH Iseyin campus quagmire

Makinde promises to resolve LAUTECH Iseyin campus quagmire

Yinka ADETUNJI

Following his visit to the Iseyin campus of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology LAUTECH, Friday, the Oyo state governor Engr Seyi Makinde has assured that the quagmire assailing the campus and frustrating its smooth running would soon be resolved.

Governor Makinde gave this assurance after listening to various stakeholders at the campus hosting the College of Agriculture and Renewable Natural Resources.

“As promised, we visited the LAUTECH Iseyin Campus today to engage with stakeholders on various issues raised that directly affect the smooth running of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Renewable Natural Resources. After hearing from students, management and representatives of the community, we agreed to meet in Ibadan next month to discuss further with a view to resolving these issues,” Governor Makinde said in a social media post.

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Students’ representatives who spoke during the visit unveiled a litany of travails including inadequate facilities, non-availability of laboratories, lack of research farms, absence of farm practical experience (both crop and livestock) and acute shortage of office spaces for lecturers (disclosing this particularly made lecturers remain in Ogbomoso while students languish in Iseyin). The students also complained of inadequate security and lecture halls among others, lamenting, “We have been facing a lot here.”

Though admitting they had teething problems the management led by the Vice Chancellor Professor Rasak Olatunde ROM Kalilu and the Provost Professor Abel Ogunwale tried to downplay the issues, highlighting efforts being made to solve the problems. The governor who however acknowledged the problems informed another meeting would be held in Ibadan in the middle of January that would be attended by all stakeholders including students’ representatives.

The governor instructed movable items like tractor should be moved down to the campus from Ogbomoso to ease the problem of lack of exposure of students to practical experience as he pointed to ongoing construction works at the site. “We will do what we need to do,” he said.

He also recalled that prior his coming a five year course used to take ten years at the university assuring his government have the capacity to resolve the present problem too.

ogbomosoinsightonline.com reports that the Iseyin campus of LAUTECH has been writhing in a gridlock of crises since it’s establishment in 2023 arising from lack of conviction on the parts of students and lecturers especially most of whom believed it is ill-advised. There were suggestions a new faculty or college should have been established faulting the idea of relocating a thriving faculty of over three decades in existence in one fell swoop to a virgin land.

The problems envisaged then have now come to the surface, stalling proper impartation of knowledge to the primary stakeholders and making the first set (brought in at 200 level to face the prospect of being derided as half-baked graduates).

Analysts have meanwhile suggested that the campus be turned into an institute of agriculture or an entirely new institution in the face of the establishment of the Federal University of Agriculture and Technology in Okeho (FUNATO), which is less than ten minutes drive away. “Prospective students will prefer a federal university offering the same courses and programmes to a satellite campus that is yet to find its feet. From indications too, Iseyin community is tending towards seeking something different,” a commentator told Ogbomoso Insight.