Submitted by: Inya, Agha.
The Vice-Chancellor, University of Nigeria, Prof. Bartho Okolo has invited Nigerian Journalists to join the campaign aimed at restoring the priority of education in the South–East.
In a speech delivered at the 2nd edition of South-East media summit held at the Nike Lake Hotel, Enugu, Prof. Okolo lamented the decline in enrolment figure among male students in the South East and said the time was ripe to halt the ugly trend.
“I would also like to use this forum to invite you to join a campaign that is very close to my heart. It is a campaign that seeks to restore education to our priority in the South-eastern Nigeria. Every now and then we read about the decline in number of children, especially boys, going to school in the South–East and it feels abstract because the reports are not backed with figures and statistics. However, I can tell you the situation is serious and we need a campaign to reverse the trend”, he said.
The Vice-Chancellor, who spoke through the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Enugu Campus), Prof. Ifoma Enemo, also expressed worry that South-East entrepreneurs who have the wherewithal to champion the revival of the spirit of education in the zone were more interested in building hotels instead of schools, a development he said had scattered students from the region to other zones in the country where they go in search for private schools.
Further, Prof Okolo enjoined the journalists to discharge their duties within the confines of their professional ethics, noting that the theme of the summit-Role of the Media in South East Integration- was a reflection that journalists in the region were alive to their social responsibility.
The Vice-Chancellor expressed the readiness of UNN Mass Communication Department, which is one of the oldest schools of journalism in the country, to partner with journalists to organise a seminar where their professional ethics would be discussed. According to him, “Such a discussion has become necessary in the light of recent advances in journalism, especially the emergence of internet-based publications and the social networks”.
