The Federal College of Dental Technology and Therapy, Enugu, has disclaimed a statement in circulation, portraying it as already possessing full authorisation to run independent degree programmes.
A statement issued by the Head of Public Relations of the College, Mr Omololu Ogunmade, on Wednesday, in Enugu, advised the general public to ignore the statement because it was never issued by the institution.
“Purveyors of the controversial statement have 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).
“The unauthorised purveyors’ statement or claim is misleading and not signed by the college,” he said.
According to him, mischievous elements, whose mission is to truncate the current steps being taken by the institution to secure NUC’s authorisation, to transform the College into a university, were behind the circulation of the controversial statement.
“Our attention has been drawn to a statement purportedly circulated by us with misleading information about the recent approval granted by the 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, a 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. Saliu that we issued a clear statement stating that the regulatory body had given us the nod to precede with degree programmes, 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 the 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 programmess,” he said.