By Timothy Nwobodo and Okechukwu Agu

Between the years 2020 and April 2023, the Enugu State University of Science and Technology, ESUT, had a total of 77 lecturers promoted to either the rank of Professors or Associate Professors.

The Immediate past Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Charles Eze disclosed this in an interview with ESUT Monitor.

 According to the breakdown by the former Vice Chancellor, he explained that a total of 35 Readers were promoted to the rank of Professors while 42 other got promoted to the positions of Association Professors.

“There are stages in the process of appraisal and promotion and we saw a situation where most academic staff had passed through all the stages. The ones left were to be performed by the Vice Chancellor. Their creative output were domiciled in the Vice Chancellor’s office not sent to external accessors, so that was part of my major assignment.

“For many of them whose papers came back, they were positive and we had to proceed to the next stage which was University appraisal committee. That was what we did and when we did the two appraisals, the promotions that were released, we had not less than 35 people promoted to Professors then about 40 to 42 Associate Professors.  

“That should be counted as an achievement because there is nothing as good as enabling people to grow as they are rendering their services. If one realises that he has given his best and is due for promotion to the next position and for no fault of his, he is still stagnated on a particular position, I think such person’s productivity will be greatly hampered.  He will not be motivated to give you his best because the conclusion is that the system is not encouraging you to grow so why should I give my best?

The former Acting VC expressed delight that his successor, Professor Aloysius-Michaels Okolie is continuing in the similar trajectory

“I saw it as a strategy we can deploy to improve on the productivity of the academic staff and it actually yielded the desired dividends. The lecturers are all up and doing. Having attained the zenith of their careers, a good number of them and those that were made Associate Professors, the current administration under the leadership of the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Okolie has also moved them to the rank of Professors. We all read the report of the newly promoted Professors and readers in ESUT Monitor. We have enough Professors in virtually all the departments.”