The Principal of Sapele Technical College, Sapele, Mrs. Rosemary Itawansa on Tuesday denounced online reports over alleged dilapidation of facilities in the school.
Mrs. Itawansa reacting to misrepresentation of facts during the visit of the Senator representing Delta Central, Senator Ede Dafinone to the school, said the school was among the technical colleges given full rehabilitation by the Delta State Government few years ago.
According to the media reports, the lawmaker paid an unscheduled visit to the Sapele Technical College on Monday, lamenting the present state of dilapidation of the institution.
While speaking with students, teachers, and community leaders, the Senator assured them that he would work with the state and federal governments to get the power restored and also look into other ways to improve the school’s infrastructure.
The reports also claimed that the College Principal, Mrs. Itawansa Rosemary, gave a heartbreaking account of how she came to the school one and a half years ago, met it in a bad state, with no power supply. This has made it impossible to run the workshops in the school and forced the students to learn in darkness, amongst others.
Mrs. Itawansa, stated that the only challenge facing the school is the issue of power because of the bad state of their transformer and the power situation in Amukpe.
She said “that press release is not correct. When Senator Chief Ede Dafinone came there, he saw for himself that we have what it takes for the school to be a Polytechnic.
“The community people were there and they saw for themselves and made statement that the school is up to standard.
“However, it is true we have power issues which he mentioned and it is with regards to the bad transformer. But that is not to say that the state government did not give us a generator.
“We have heavy duty generators there that we fuel and the ones we run with diesel for practicals. I was there when he was making his last statement to the press that ‘you can see that the school is up to standard and has enough equipment’.
“But that the only observation there, is power outage. That was his statement before he left after the visit. So the true situation of things, is that Sapele Technical College is up to standard and not dilapidated as wrongly reported,” she said.
The Principal who denied certain comments online, noted that the Junior Secondary section was renovated some months ago adding that a memo was sent to the State Government on the issue of the transformer.
“I think about three or four months ago, the JSS section was renovated by the immediate past administration. We have written a memo to the government with regards to the issue of the transformer and it’s receiving attention.
“Nearly every department has a generator and we have a bigger generator, 300 kva or so to carry the whole school.
“So what I feel is that the statement issued could be an error from the press because what he (Edafinone) said was that the school has all it takes to be a Polytechnic and it’s up to standard,” Mrs Itawansa stated.
Sapele Technical College, aside from being the second oldest technical college after Yaba Technical College, is the first technical school in Delta, and it is owned by the state government.
