23rd February, 2012
Three prospective candidates seeking admission into Yaba College of Technology, YABATECH, Nigeria have slammed N300million suit on the institution for operating discriminatory admission policies.
According to three different suits filed on behalf of the three students, Okpanku KaluIkpa, Momah Anthony Oluchukwu and Emeafu Francis Ebere, by Barrister Uche Obi of Alliance Law firm, the three applicants alleged that application forms for admission into Higher National Diploma, HND, full time courses in Yaba College of Technology were sold to applicants from all schools but the fate of some students were already predetermined by the defendant for no justifiable reason.
The application for admission into HND full time course in Yaba College of Technology contains particulars of previous schools that applicants attended which are duly considered by the college before an offer of admission was made to them which they duly accepted. By the offer of admission to the applicants, the college found them qualified to be admitted as students, and therefore restrained from ascertaining otherwise.
Pursuant to the said admission, the applicants paid the required acceptance fees and the receipts of same duly acknowledged by the respondent. By acknowledging the receipt of the acceptance fees of the applicants, the college had affirmed and sealed their admission into the school, therefore making it untenable for the college to renege on such contract of admission to them.
However, despite the payment of the acceptance fees by the applicants, the college wrongly and persistently refused to allow them to complete their registration process to date without any reason from the college.
Instead, the list of blacklisted schools was circulated to the admission office and various heads of department during the admission process so as to exclude the names of students from such schools.
Such blacklisted schools are Federal Polytechnic, Offa, Kwara State, Federal Polytechnic, Oko, Anambra State, the Polytechnic, Ibadan, Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro, Ogun State, Kwara Polytechnic, Ilorin, Osun State Polytechnic, Esa-Oke and Iree, Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu, Auchi Polytechnic, Auchi, Edo State, Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta, Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, Enugu and Federal Polytechnic, Nekede whose students are regarded as troublesome and cultists without any proof of that by the respondent.
The applicants averred that there is no indictment of cultism or criminality against them by their former schools and therefore, the decision of Yaba College of Technology to unilaterally blacklist, classify and categorise their former schools for cultism is not only baseless but offends their presumption of innocence and their constitutional right under the Nigerian Constitution as the action of the college amounts to a verdict of guilty and punishment to non- offenders.
The applicants further averred that the college deliberately manipulated them into accepting the admission offered them on 14 January, 2011 only to prevent them from completing their registration so as to enable them write their examinations.
In view of this act of preventing them from completing their admission process, the applicants are not only urging the court to award them N100 million each as exemplary damages for the oppressive and brazen actions of Yaba College of Technology but to also declare the action of the college illegal, arbitrary, unconstitutional discriminatory and offensive.