An enforcement team comprising the Ogun State Ministry of Health and Nursing and Midwifery Committee has sealed the Nursing Department of Harvarde College of Science, Business and Management Studies, Obada in the Ewekoro Local Government Area of the state.
The state government moved against the school for allegedly offering a degree programme in Nursing Sciences for six years without accreditation from the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria.
Sunday PUNCH had earlier reported how the institution operates as an academic institution with no clear specification of where it belongs among the categories of higher schools in Nigeria.
Speaking during the enforcement exercise, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Kayode Oladehinde, in a statement on Tuesday, stated that such unauthorised programmes contributed to quackery in the nursing profession.
Oladehinde revealed that such fraudulent activities pose a threat to the health of the populace, maintaining that the Nursing Department of the institution would remain closed until fully accredited.
Represented by the acting Director of Nursing Services, Mrs Serifat Aminu, during the enforcement, Oladehinde said a degree in Nursing obtained from Harvarde College and similar institutions without NMCN accreditation was worthless and that graduates from such schools would be denied licence to practise in Nigeria and other parts of the world.
“We have discovered that many institutions, including Harvarde College, offer nursing degrees to unsuspecting students. Our mission is to clamp down on such institutions because they end up producing quacks in the Nursing profession.
“This is dangerous for the society. Unfortunately, most students are unaware that their time is being wasted,” he said.
The permanent secretary warned parents and candidates desiring to pursue nursing or related programmes to be wary of institutions making false claims by checking the NMCN website for an updated list of accredited institutions, assuring that the government would continue to checkmate quackery in the nursing profession.
Responding, a 300-level student, who wished to remain anonymous, expressed shock at the institution’s lack of accreditation, lamenting the amount of money her parents had spent on the programme.
The Sunday PUNCH report titled; ‘Inside Ogun private polytechnic running unaccredited law, nursing, pharmacy programmes’, exposed how the private polytechnic was admitting students to study Law, Nursing, Pharmacy and other professional courses.
In the report, students of the college expressed concern over how they cannot distinguish whether they are in a polytechnic, a university, or both combined.
The students lamented that the college, which claims to have its accreditation from the National Board for Technical Education, was also admitting students to study Law and other courses that are never run by polytechnics.
