SRC appeals for restoration of university accreditation

The Students Representation Council (SRC) of the Ideas University College, at Fiapre, on Monday appealed to the Ministry of Education, and human rights organizations to intervene for the reinstatement of the institution’s accreditation.

The student body expressed dismay that withdrawal of the university’s accreditation by the National Accreditation Board (NAB) was against their educational rights and had caused “great psychological trauma to us the students”.

A statement signed by Daniel Adama, the President of SRC and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Sunyani, said though a high court in Sunyani ordered the NAB to restore the accreditation in 2013, the Board had failed to comply.

“The action of the NAB cannot be accepted in our democracy where the court is the only source of hope hopeless”, it said.

“The arbitrary and capricious revocation of the institutional and programme accreditation prematurely and abruptly truncated the right of we the students to education. The NAB did not act with the welfare of the students at heart and it acted as if it was a revolutionary institution that operates with force without recourse to welfare of the citizenry”.

According to the statement, some of the students had completed their programmes but “are now in a state of dilemma”.

The institutional and programme accreditation of University was revoked by the NAB in December, 2011.

Key among the reasons for the revocation was a “controversy over the proprietorship of the institution that led to the split of the student body into two groups” according to a fact-finding committee instituted by the NAB on the matter.

But the SRC emphasized that the report of the committee, which was the basis for the revocation of the accreditation, was blatant untruth.