By Asst Corps Marshal Chike Nwaka
IMT 1973 Entry Set
Worth reading about our IMT Enugu as the school celebrates its 50th anniversary 22-26 November 2023
The IMT, Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu, was founded as a lead Institution of Higher Learning in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Management Studies—a truly technological and management tertiary education institute, both in practice and theory—a place of learning capable of stimulating and facilitating the technological growth of the country. Although it took off from the premises of the defunct College of Technology, and that of the Institute of Administration, Enugu, it was a completely different entity in its academic curricula, mission, vision, and values.
The then Administrator of East Central State, Nigeria, Dr. Ukpabi Asika, through the Institute of Management and Technology Establishment Edict, Number 10, of May 31, 1973, created the IMT. According to the IMT establishment edict, the AIMT, Associate of IMT, the terminal qualification in the IMT, is higher than the Bachelor’s degree by one experiential year. IMT was indeed created to lead the Country in a new drive toward the achievement of a quick, successful comprehensive technological/industrial breakthrough.
Although Ukpabi Asika was not with us in Biafra during the Nigeria–Biafra war, having been ‘trapped’ on the Nigerian side of the divide, he considered the engineering, technological, scientific, and managerial feats recorded in Biafra to be worthy of replication and advancement, towards the technological emancipation of Nigeria. He therefore enlisted the services of Professor MO Chijioke, a world-renowned physicist and apostle of Clone/Adaptation Engineering, who was the head of the Electrical/Electronic wing of Biafra’s legendary, Research and Production (RAP) – a complex entity under which unbelievable achievements in virtually all spheres of engineering and science were attained despite the stifling economic and environmental conditions of war-ravaged Biafra.
Professor MO Chijioke quickly assembled a formidable academic, technological, and management staff, competent professionals in their specialist fields, from within and outside Nigeria. State-of-the-art equipment was brought in, and the IMT took off on a very sound and enviable footing.
The academic/professional programs of the IMT were fashioned into a five-year scheme of two parts. The successful completion of the first three years culminated in the issuance of the Licentiate of the IMT (LIMT) certificate, after which students who attained a specific high Cumulative Grade Point Average cut-off mark at the least, would proceed to another two-year program leading to the award of the Associate of the IMT, (AIMT).
While engaged in the theoretical and practical aspects of the educational requirements within the IMT, all the long vacation periods were used for the acquisition of real-life industrial work experience in industries and well-established practice-based institutions, carefully selected and monitored by appropriate staff of the IMT.
The Industrial Centre of the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), was an engineering/technological hub, especially designed and equipped, for continuing practical engineering/technological activities—a place, where students, lecturers, and technical staff gave expression to their innovative spirits, and freely practiced Copy/Clone and Adaptation Engineering/Technology. Electric motors of different capacities ranging from moderate to very high, mechanical engine parts, and many other things were manufactured/fabricated there.
Every academic department in IMT then, measured up to the highest standards obtainable in the best institutions of higher learning anywhere in the world. Products of IMT were properly groomed in the theory and practice of their fields of study. It was therefore not surprising that IMT Higher Diplomates easily got admission into the best Universities in Europe and America to directly pursue their Master’s Degree programs or move straight into the doctorate programs, as the case may be.
It is also on record that IMT graduates who got admission then to pursue their Master’s degree programs in Nigerian Universities, generally excelled beyond their counterparts from virtually all other institutions of higher learning. Within a few years of its establishment, IMT became a reference point—a center of excellence for the production of skilled hands and educated minds adequately groomed to steer the wheels of industry.
Admission requirements into the IMT were very stringent. A prospective candidate must have obtained five papers passed at credit level or above, at a sitting, in the West African School Certificate or GCE London Ordinary Level examinations. English Language and Mathematics were compulsory subjects regardless of the course one was applying for.
The IMT was not fashioned after the conventional Nigerian universities, neither was it designed as a polytechnic. It was conceived and structured as a reference practical-oriented institution of higher learning—a perversity, in the mold of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT. Professor Chijioke stressed that the IMT was an educational institution with the combined attributes of a university and a polytechnic.
That was the IMT which I enrolled into, attended, and graduated from, as a member of its first admission set of students. I was also recruited into the teaching staff of the IMT immediately after graduation as an Assistant Lecturer.
‘Ali-Must-Go’ came calling.
The intrusive ‘visitation’ to the IMT in 1976 by Col Ahmadu Ali—that brazen invasion of a regional academic institution of higher learning, by the then Federal Commissioner for Education, turned out to be a very sad day in the annals of IMT.
Colonel Ahmadu Ali had become infamous among students of institutions of higher learning in Nigeria. The series of disagreements Col Ahmadu Ali had with NUNS, the National Union of Nigerian Students, soon degenerated into the ‘Ali Must Go’ nationwide students’ protests—a violent conflict between students and the central government.
During his tenure as the Federal Commissioner overseeing the Federal Education Ministry, he stirred controversies with the pronouncements and policies he made in his official capacity. When he was abruptly scheduled to visit the IMT at very short notice, many of us suspected that his mission would be sinister. Indeed, his prying into the academic/technological pursuits of the IMT then was for the sole purpose of bringing into effect a vital portion of an obnoxious script crafted by the ruling Military Junta, to, in their erroneous calculations and warped understanding, ensure that the Igbo would never raise their heads again in any fields of endeavor.
The very suspicious, urgent inquisitiveness—that unguarded, impudent curiosity with which Ahmadu Ali, the Federal Commissioner for Education, wanted to tour the IMT Industrial Centre, and the building complex housing the bulky Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer, EDVAC, a general-purpose mainframe digital computer system, was a troubling indication of an impending destabilizing blow at the IMT.
While inspecting the Industrial Centre, Ahmadu Ali could not hide his disdain for the bold initiatives towards technological advancement, and scientific growth, which the IMT was pioneering. He impetuously announced that the IMT Industrial Centre was a continuation, an amplification of Biafra’s Research and Production, RAP.
Brutally cynical, he scowled, belching an outburst of a query:
‘Why should the IMT be different from all other institutions of higher learning in Nigeria?’
This outburst betrayed the fact that Col Ahmadu Ali, a respected physician, was also caught up in that despicable retrogressive mindset of ‘the Nigerian Mentality’, which direly dreads innovations while clinging to their run-of-the-mill, never-achieving, ‘rutted route’ of doing things.
It was quite obvious, that Colonel Ahmadu Ali was not interested in seeing the various technological strides the IMT was making, using the platform of the Industrial Centre. He did not come to extol our efforts, but to excoriate us!
Having completed with dispatch, his ‘tour’ of the Industrial Centre and the computer complex, the Federal Education Commissioner, summoned the IMT Rector and his management team. Fiendish. Despotic. Utterly relishing the moment, he announced with diabolical gusto, the purpose of his visit:
“Scrap the LIMT/AIMT program. Start pursuing and awarding ND/HND. Whittle down your academic/industrial research and production activities. The (EDVAC) mainframe computer installation should be immediately dismantled and transported to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.”
And the EDVAC was forcefully moved to ABU Zaria, where it was mounted as an exhibition piece. There it wasted away and soon faded into antiquity—a mere monumental museum piece.
Thus, the ‘conquerors’ of Biafra, through a mere verbal pronouncement ejaculated by one of their noxious policy-propagating mouthpieces, coerced the Government of a supposedly federating State in Nigeria to unceremoniously alter its appropriately gazetted, lawful edict.
Members of the Governing Council, Management, and Academic Board of the IMT quickly put their heads together and came out with a plan. The original five-year academic program of the IMT was therefore compressed to fit into a four-year program, but not whittled down. The LIMT, Licentiate of IMT, 3year program gave way to the 2year DIMT, Diploma of IMT, while the AIMT, Associate of IMT program was renamed HDIMT, Higher Diploma of IMT.
Despite all these deliberately contrived debilitating impediments, the IMT continued making tremendous academic strides. Professor JC Okaka, the then Head of the Department of Food Technology, IMT, during the brief merger period of the IMT with ASUTEC, Anambra State University of Technology, narrated to me the experience he had with his colleagues at the Academic Senate of the University. He was mandated to submit a degree program for food technology, which he readily did. After presenting his submission, the University Academic Senate deliberated over it. However, they returned a verdict that the standard was too high for a degree program. In his defense, Professor Okaka had to provide the Diploma (not a Higher Diploma) academic scheme of work, Food Technology Department of the IMT, from where he lifted his submission.
Doctor Nnamdi Okenwa, who was a permanent lecturer in the Mass Communication department of IMT, and a part-time lecturer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, had a similar experience to that of Professor Okaka. He had administered the exact examination questions he set for 200-level IMT students, to 300-level UNN Mass Communication students, which he had thoroughly treated with students from both institutions at levels 200 and 300. IMT students performed much better in the examinations than their UNN counterparts who protested that the standard was too high for them.
When those who ruin education in Nigeria in the guise of running it realized that they did not succeed in stopping the academic/professional surge of IMT, they established their National Board for Technical Education, NBTE, by a military decree, and conferred on it the authority to regulate the academic standards as well as the requirements for admission into the institutions under their regulatory purview. In this amorphous board, they lumped together technical secondary schools, technical colleges, Colleges of Technology, and Polytechnics. And they, out of ignorance and/or self-defeating pettiness classified the IMT as a polytechnic.
The NBTE then went ahead to cook a ‘witches’ broth’ of entry requirements. It directed that a ridiculous hodgepodge of subjects passed at the secondary school certificate level should be the entry qualification into all polytechnics throughout Nigeria. This ‘devil’s dinner’ prepared and forced down the throat of the polytechnics by the NBTE, poisoned and destroyed technological education in Nigeria till this day.
Interestingly, the scenario that unfolded and keeps unraveling from this policy of repression unleashed by the Federal Government against the Igbo, as aptly expressed in the Igbo adage – ‘Onye ji mmadu n’ana ji onwe ya’, which translates to, ‘Anyone who holds down another to the ground, holds himself down’, has only succeeded in ensuring that Nigeria has remained a permanent occupant at the lowest rungs of the despicable world of the never-developing nations. Sadly, Nigeria has, since the end of the Nigeria-Biafra ‘shooting’ war, remained an object of ridicule—a laughing stock to the rest of the world. What a nation! So richly blessed, yet so awfully wasted!
Asst Corps Marshal Chike Nwaka. IMT 1973 Entry Set, Former Lecturer/Principal Lecturer IMT,(…1995), Regional Commander, FRSC (…2014
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