Students of the Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH) School of Nursing, Aba, have blamed their ordeal in the school, including delayed graduation, on corruption.

More than 10 of the students who testified before the Visitation Panel to the school alleged that more than 400 students who were supposed to graduate after three or four years have spent 10 years and were yet to pass out.

The students revealed that the same management allegedly admitted to 400 students in a class for a course with a carrying capacity of only about 100 students.

The students, who objected to publication of their names, citing an alleged stern warning given to them last February by the NMCN during a visit to the school, told the panel that they paid school fees to the office of the former Principal, Mrs. Ngozi Nwagwu, without being issued with receipts and were later asked to pay through a bank – into what turned out to be a personal account.

They accused the former management of the school of collecting monies to register them with the Nursing Council but failing to do so and neither accounting for the monies.

Narrating their frustration, the students said they have been very much demoralised in carrying on with their studies studying as they were being forced to “buy marks after writing examinations in which they believed they performed well.”

According to them, they have suffered both “financial and academic frustration” because the school authorities have made it a policy for students to resit all courses taken in a session for failing just one course, just to extort money from them.

The Chairman of the Visitation Panel, Dr Festus Okoye, attributed the rot in the school to a culture of silence cultivated by the students, staff and other stakeholders of the school.

Okoye pointed out that cleaning the Augean Stable in the school would require all the stakeholders revealing the whole truth about what led to the rot.

Abia State Governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu, the school’s Visitor, had inaugurated the panel last January to investigate the causes and proffer solutions to the rot in the school.

Ikpeazu charged the panel to find out the system of charging fees, index the student Nurses; enrolment irregularities as well as delayed graduation issues in the school.