The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Abia Poly

  • Man commits suicide in Aba

    Man commits suicide in Aba

    A young man in his late twenty living at Umuobe village, Ovom 1 and a graduate of Abia State Polytechnic, Aba, has allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself with a rope in his family house.

    According to the reports, the man whose name was yet to be ascertained allegedly killed himself on Sunday after attending a church service in one of the Catholic Church in the area.

    The young man who was said to be an orphan, The Nation was told, would be among the next set of graduates that would be shortlisted for the compulsory one National Youth Service Scheme.

    Until his death, many who knew him said that he was doing tiling job and was feeding well as he has customers and was making a lot of income from the business.

    They however said that they were yet to point out the reason why he should end his life through such a deadly mission on that fateful Sunday.

    Though the family members were yet to be reached, a source in the area who confirmed the incident said; “he returned from church on Sunday after attending one of the church services and nobody suspected that such a thing was going to happen. It was around 5pm that the bad news broke.

    “The mother and the dad we learnt are all dead. I think he is the breadwinner of the family. It is very unfortunate. We learnt that he will be among the people that will be going for NYSC soon because he schooled in Abia poly. We are yet to understand how the incident happened. The boy has a handwork which was fetching him money, so I don’t think that it was hunger or out of frustration that led him into such action. I learnt his girl friend and a few other persons were around, though I learnt that the girl friend was said to be in the kitchen when the incident happened.

    “According to the people of the area, the incident is a sacrilege and that they have to perform some rituals before his body could be touched and buried. So, it was on Monday that they (villagers) after performing the rituals took away his corpse from the room where it was lying,” the source stated.

    The source said that fiancé to the deceased was later invited to the Azuka Police station in whose jurisdiction the incident happened.

    But when contacted, the Abia State Police Commissioner, CP Joshiak Habila who confirmed the incident said that the matter was yet to be officially reported to the police.

  • Abia poly to get N200m skill centre

    Abia poly to get N200m skill centre

    A N200m facility is to be built at Abia State Polytechnic, Aba, where business people can acquire skills and be certified.

    The centre will be set up by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), said its Southeast Representative Mr Chinedu Onu, a lawyer, who led a delegation from the agency to the institution.

    Onu said the project will be private sector-driven, the centre managed by a director appointed by the agency, while the teachers will be drawn from the state polytechnic.

    He said, “After carrying out a research, we discovered that most of the male folk in the southeast in business lack formal education. They enjoy doing business than going to school. You know that Aba is the centre of commerce and business activities where majority of these young boys come to exercise their technological prowess and that is why we thought it wise to partner with the Abia State Polytechnic management to establish the center here which is very close to the business community.

    “We hope that the project when completed will help the young boys doing business in Aba and its environs to get proper training on the modern way of doing business and improve their skills on how best to produce some of the things that they are producing in order to remain relevant and the aim for which TETfund wants to establish this center is to sharpen their skills and promote boy-child education through skill acquisition. It is expected that the students at the end of their training will be awarded with a certificate which will enable them have the capacity to bid for job offers and have a certification that will back their skills.

    “We hope that this venture will reverse the trend in the southeast; where boys in the region prefer doing business than going to school. It will make them think with their brain and as well, use their hands to earn a living for themselves.”

    He further used the opportunity to plead with the Abia State Government to award contracts to the institution’s graduands and to sponsor a few of them and encourage more persons to embrace the exercise and pointed out that their area of focus would be on engineering; mechantronics, building tech among others.

    In his response, the acting rector of the Polytechnic, Prof. Uche Ikonne thanked the team for choosing the institution as a preferred place to site the project.

    Ikonne said that he would do everything within his power to ensure that project was sited on the institution’s campus and thanked TETfund for the numerous projects they have helped the school to build.

    The rector later took the team round the institution’s engineering, fabrication and entrepreneurial labs where the prospective students were expected to have a practical knowledge of the areas they would be trained on.

  • Rector renews call for Fed Govt to take over Abia Poly

    The Acting Rector, Abia State Polytechnic, Aba, Prof Uche Eleazar Ikonne, has renewed the call by the management of the institution for Federal Government to take over ownership of the institution.

    Ikonne, who spoke when he led the polytechnic management to the palace of Eze Eberechi Dick, Chairman Abia State Traditional Rulers’ Council, and the home of Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, noted that the acquisition of the institution by the Federal Government would lessen “the huge financial burden on the state government”.

    He said the state was struggling to fund four tertiary state institutions, namely: Abia State Polytechnic, Aba, Abia State College of Education Technical, Arochukwu, Abia State School Health Technology, Aba and Abia State University, Uturu.

    Ikonne regretted that the state was among the few states yet to given a federal recognition.

    The rector, who visited the monarch to felicitate with him on his appointment as the Chancellor of the University of Abuja, urged him to use his new position to lobby for the polytechnic to be run by the Federal Government.

    He was optimistic that Eze Dick would use his wealth of experience  to move the university forward.

    At Abaribe’s home, Ikonne also made the same request of the senator, urging him to use his office to get better fortunes for the polytechnic.

    Both of them thanked the group for their visit and promised to assist the polytechnic.

    Abaribe, who expressed his happiness over the award given to him, also advised the polytechnic to improve on its academic standards and products.

    He said he had been aware of the challenges facing the school before their visit, promising to assist them towards being taken over by the Federal Government.