Due to the dilapidated state of hotel accommodation in the state own institution, the management of Kogi State polytechnic has shut down its hostels for one session.
The decision to shut down the school hostels is coming few days after the polytechnic announced its resumption from an over four months old strike.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the institution, Mr Luke Yakubu who confirmed this to Daily Post noted that, “the renovation is necessary because the previous administration under Captain Idris Wada built 2 hostels while the remaining ones were inherited, hence the need for a total overhaul .”
The polytechnic spokesperson also acknowledged that it will be inconvenient for students to resume and stay in the hostels in such conditions.
Meanwhile, students in the institution have continued to accuse landlords and private hostel owners of taking undue advantage of the non-availability of hostels on campus.
The school resumed in June leaving students at the mercy of opportunistic private hostel operators who take advantage of the non-availability of hostels on campus.
Speaking on the current issue, two students, Suleman Abubakar and Gabriel Emmanuel appealed to the school authorities to speed up the renovation of the hostel.
They revealed that most female students now squat in the houses of their male counterparts which is a strange trend in African culture.
“Under African culture, a lady that is not yet married to a man shouldn’t be living with him under the same roof. But because of the poor accommodation, they are forced to do so most especially those ones who could not pay huge amount of money to rent an apartment.
“Now that they have shut down the hotels, we are confused as we speak. It is unfortunate this is coming when we find it difficult to pay our school fees, buy handouts and now looking elsewhere to get money for accommodation,” Abubakar lamented.
Recall that Kogi State Polytechnic Lokoja was in 2016 shut down due to the destruction of the school’s property by some aggrieved students.
Also, the school suffered another setback when the Joint Action Committee on Tertiary Institutions on January 30, 2017 embarked on an industrial action to press home their demands, including payment of salaries.
