By Matthew Denis
The pioneer Principal and Provost of Kwara state College of Nursing Oke Ode, Elder Luke Omotayo Malomo has disclosed that lack of infrastructural development is limiting his capacity to take the college to greater height.
He made the disclosure during an interview with this medium partnering to his achievements and issues bordering the state of health sector in the country recently.
The Provost said “when I resumed here I was posted as a pioneer principal before things changed to become the provost. I was posted in April 2011 and I met three buildings, the administrative block, auditorium and the academic complex. And I met bushes and trees all around, therefore I have to look inward for ways to transform the college.
“I inherited empty administrative block therefore we provided the furniture and electronics for office use like computers and other gadgets. Now we can boast of having enough furniture and computers, we have demonstration rooms for nursing and anatomy, we also have common rooms.”
“I have the opportunity to recruit lecturers, though we engaged contract officers’ whom are experienced nurses that have retired to handle some of the courses. Presently, there are five experienced contract staff working in the college, corps members, college staff and seconded staff from the ministry to keep the school progressing. There are non- teaching staff that were recruited during my administration.
“The first accreditation known as Resources accreditation was done when the team of the accreditors came from the Nursing Council in 2013 for the first time, they also came for the final one in 2014 which made us to start admitting students into the college. For the first time we had opportunity to admit 40 students into the college which is greater than the number approved for college of nursing and midwifery Ilorin, they were given 30 students by the Nursing Council.
According to him the college was given full accreditation in 2017 which has never happened before, so for good five years the accreditation team will not visit the college for accreditation, even if they visit us it is supportive accreditation to know whether we are keeping to the standard or there is a retrogressive move in the way we are running the college.
Elder Malomo stressed that focusing on the academic complex there is library that can accommodate over 70 students although not to the specification of what his tenure want for the college.
“There should be a library for nursing students, school of midwifery and public nursing, each suppose to have their separate library building to meet the specification of the council. There is a new library complex under construction by the past administration. The building has already reached a lithel stage, hopefully, it will not be an abandon project and we hope it will complete in due course.
“We have building complex where the students for school of Midwifery will be receiving their lectures but we have problem with hostel accommodation. It is delaying us to start this midwifery school aside from this we also have enough lecturers to take the students on Public Health Nursing, however, if a team from Nursing Council visit us and demand for hostels accommodation for these sets of students we can’t introduce the present building for accreditation.
“That’s our problem, then I even say to them at Kwara state house of assembly that we don’t have school of Opthalmic Nursing we called it post basic Opthalmic Nursing for eyes treatment in the state. We only have one at the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) which belong to the Federal government. I told the state House of Assembly that we have enough equipment at the state Civil Service hospital and Sobi Specialist Hospital to start the course.
” In my school we can train the Opthalmic Nursing, they will go for their clinical experiences at these hospitals I mentioned. We have a lecturer that specialises in opthalmic nursing that can be the head of Opthalmic post basic nursing. Like I said when there is no infrastructure there is little to be done. Students will not be encouraged but I have it in my plan that before leaving the school some courses will be introduced by the special grace of God.
“We pray that the new government will assist us in finishing our hostels and build more structures for us so that the word ‘college’ can truly materialize. By law we have seven schools in a college but because of these lapses we are so handicap in nature here. We are planning to approach the rightful quarters to begin public health nursing so that when our students graduate they can go for national youths service. It is a way of expanding the courses of the college. Having more schools will increase the internally Generated Revenue of the state and provide employment opportunity for the community and help to popularize the state government.
On the students performance, he said “We admit students on merit, examination is conducted on laid down rules and regulations, we marked our answer scripts centrally, as nursing council used to mark, therefore, you merit what you see when the result is out, marking centrally has called for objectivity in marking and evaluation of students. If you pass you pass and if you fail you fail because nursing training has to do with human life. Selection of best students is done collectively by central committee in charge of examination.
” Presently, all the students that are in the college have been indexed and I thank God for this development. Initially, I told you that we were given forty students to be admitted but now the number has increased to 50 students by the nursing council.
“We have recorded excellent and brilliant performance from our 2017 student nurses that were presented for nursing council examination, I presented 35 students for nursing council examination and we have 100 percent in their results. In 2018 result I presented 38 students to the Council and we had 92 percent performance because three students have issues with some courses but I’m still very proud of these results.
He revealed that they are partnering with Malaysia to introduce their entrepreneurial scheme through Memoranda of Understanding so that their students here will travel to Malaysia for entrepreneurship skills and they too can come here as time goes on to set up business of their owns when they finish their training to avoid being idle. If given second tenure he will accept the offer to further take the status of the college to a greater height.
On the health sector in the country he stressed that nothing to write home about from the manpower we don’t have enough manpower and equipments in the various hospitals.
