“THE EXTORTION IS JUST TOO MUCH” – DESPOLY STUDENTS CRY OUT

Graduating students of the Delta state polytechnic, located at Otefe-Oghara, Ethiope-West local government, are in distress grieving over the compulsory payment of Convocation Levy and exorbitant result collection fees foisted on them by the Polytechnic administration. It was gathered that the Polytechnic administration had recently (few months back prior to the sales of entry forms) introduced a mandatory policy, wherein all graduating students are to pay for result collection and convocation gowns.
Just graduated students of the polytechnic who spoke to our reporters in separate interviews and chats described this development as arbitrary. One of the students described the policy as inhuman, noting that, “ it is so sad that an educational institution being headed by a mother could actually make education so difficult for the students from the poor and middle class homes. When we thought we had graduated and there will be no more worries of how to pay school fees and pay for rent and all that; then The Polytechnic administration comes up with another brilliant extortion scheme. It is more or less like we have not graduated because when you sum up all of these fees it is equivalent to a session’s school fees”.
Our pressmen gathered that the graduated HND students were asked to pay ten thousand naira(#10,000) for the collection of their certificate, four thousand five hundred naira(#4500) for hiring of convocation gown, two thousand naira(#2000) for transcript, and another seven thousand naira for collection of N.D certificate (that is if you graduated from the Delta Polytechnic, Oghara). You can do the Mathematics yourself. That is equal to #23500. Failure to pay that cash means you cannot do your clearance and proceed to collect the Statement of Result. When you add up the other pre-NYSC bills then you will realize that it’s almost like you have not graduated; schooling continues.
Then for the N.D graduates that bill is #11,500 (that is for ND certificates and hiring of matriculation gowns).
Also speaking, another graduating student totally condemns this ‘extortion scheme’ initiated by the Polytechnic and coined it ‘Pure Wickedness’. “As I speak to you”, she says, “I am helpless because my parents don’t have that kind of money. It is wrong for any institution to place such exorbitant amount of money for result clearance and collection considering the economic state of our nation”.
Another students who our reporters chatted with called on the commissioner of higher education and other stakeholders in the educational sector to call the Polytechnic administration to order. “We are begging the commissioner to urgently intervene because they are turning this Polytechnic into their personal business centers or better still ‘market place’. Some of our parents are leaving on #18,000 minimum wage, now they keep bringing one means or another to extort us; from the departments to the schools to even non academic staff. The extortion is just too much”, he laments.