A Delta-born educationist and human rights advocate, Comrade (Chief) Mulade Sheriff has written to the Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa to transfer the School of Marine Technology, Burutu, from the State Ministry of Transport to the Ministry of Higher Education, to enable the institution function effectively and optimally.
Chief Mulade, a Peace Ambassador who is also the President of the Riverine Communities Development Forum of Nigeria, made this known to journalists in Abuja at the weekend, stressing that the transfer of the School to the Higher Education Ministry would attract academics and professionals to run and manage the institution for the betterment of students and Deltans in general.
The rights activist noted that the School of Marine Technology, Burutu, had been attached to the Ministry of Transport, indicating that it was meant to train the youths in crash programmes only instead of in full fledged degree and diploma courses such as those in the universities and polytechnics respectively.
He wondered why those who conceptualized the Marine School did not place it under the State Ministry of Higher Education, a body which has the academic techniques, manpower and competence to train degree and diploma students, but rather tucked it in the Transport Ministry whose corporate goal is merely to train students in the business of marine transportation and technology.
According to Mulade, in tertiary education, a professional certificate is quite different from an academic certificate. He therefore, on behalf of riverine communities in Delta State, appealed to, and requested Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa to transfer the School of Marine Technology, Burutu, to the Ministry of Higher Education so that academic experts could run and manage it towards achieving set goals.
He also called on the Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Chief Sheriff Oborevwori and his colleagues to amend the Act that established the School of Marine Technology, and transfer it to the State Ministry of Higher Education, to enable it achieve the purpose for which it was established.
