“I stayed at home for three years owing to lack of money. My parents wanted education but they were helpless.
“I managed to conclude my secondary school education because my dad couldn’t pay the fees. I won’t blame him because he was strong and agile until 2022 when he had an accident that left him completely in a wheelchair.
“Despite many pleas, my dad wouldn’t allow my mum to do any job until the accident, no thanks to that drunk driver.
“After the accident, my mum got some loans and started a petty business but it wasn’t enough to feed a large family. There was no hope of getting educated. But I had promised my dad that I would be a graduate of law.
“So I started working hard, I did all kinds of jobs to raise funds.
“Many times I went to construction sites to assist bricklayers, while sometimes, I pushed wheelbarrows in the popular Ojota market.
“After over five years of hard labour, my friend, Saheed, told me about Havarde and my little enquiry was to establish if my savings will secure me admission to study law here (Harvarde).
“Having confirmed that, I came here, only for me to start hearing from different persons that we have been scammed.
“I am currently in my second year. If this turns out to be true, I will be the biggest loser in the world and it won’t be easy for mum to take.”
This is what Aina Jide told our reporter when she approached him earlier this week while he was sitting and daydreaming in the Obada neighborhood of Abeokuta. Abeokuta is home to the contentious Havarde College of Science, Business and Management Studies, a polytechnic that offers professional courses to students in law, pharmacy, and nursing, among other fields.
From random interviews, we gathered that locals could not explain if the institution is a polytechnic or a university. The students are equally as confused as the locals.
But because so many students live in the vicinity, the business activity in the well-known Obada has received a makeover that has thrilled the locals.
In an advert by the school posted online, it advertised that it awards National Diploma (ND) and Higher National Diploma (HND) certificates.
However, in the same advertisement, the same polytechnic also stated that it offers B.Sc. conversion programs for holders of HNDs, raising questions about whether the school was accredited by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) or currently has the National Universities Commission (NUC)’s approval to award degrees.
A pupil at the institution, who declined to provide his identity due to concerns about facing disciplinary action, communicated to our correspondent from the “well” of his perplexity that “Bros, I really do not know what to believe anymore, honestly, I am frustrated.”
He said, “We learnt that Havarde was an affiliate of Olabisi Onabanjo University.”
When asked the range of their tuition fee, he said law students pay N195,000 yearly as school fees, while those in the nursing department pay N130,000 yearly.
Findings
But Investigation by our source showed that the proprietor of the institution, Dr Oluwatosin Adebayo, severed ties with OOU many years back.
Thorough checks on both NUC and NBTE websites showed that the school was yet to be accredited as a university.
Harvard College was listed as one of the specialized schools providing recognized programs in an NBTE directory from 2021.
The college got permission of the NBTE to offer four courses which include: Accountancy, Business Administration, Mass Communication and Computer Science all for National Diploma (ND) only.
According to the NBTE, the accreditation ought to expire in October, 2022.
Although not confirmed, a staff of the institution who preferred to be anonymous, told newsmen that the school got approval to run a monotechnic with the earlier mentioned courses.
This reporter, however, discovered that, against the four courses accredited by the NBTE, the school now runs about 30 courses, including criminology, law, nursing, among others.
Management reacts
Responding to enquiry, the proprietor of the school, Dr Oluwatosin Adebayo, debunked the allegation, insisting that the school was duly registered by the federal government.
“We cannot come to Abeokuta and be doing something illegal. If anything is not clear to you, please come to us to get clarification and not spread something that is untrue.
“We used to be under OOU before but today, we don’t have any affiliation with OOU again. We can’t continue to serve one person for life,” he stated.
He further noted that what he described as a rumour against the school emanated from rusticated students of the institution.
According to him, “I think what caused all these rumours is because we do send students away from here. If after a year your GP is less than 1.00 or you misbehave, we will send you away.
“We can’t harbour such students around us but most of them will not go home and what they will now do is to embark on unnecessary rumour.”
Although the proprietor claimed that university courses on their campuses are on affiliation, he refused to mention the name(s) of the mother institution they are affiliated to.
When asked what the school awards to students, Adebayo said, “We have ND, we have HND but we don’t have the power to issue Bsc on our own, so we have to affiliate. But we have accreditation up to HND level.”
Meanwhile, thousands of students, just like Jide, are currently in the school, paying huge sums, in pursuit of academic certificates.
