By Nwabuike Favour

The Head, Department of Mass Communication at the Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic (formerly Abia State Poly), Dr Dennis Emeka Ubani, in this exclusive interview with our Business Editor, Nwabuike Favour, explores the importance for unbundling of the department and why the OOP is better placed in this spectrum.

Dr Ubani also identified the one particular need he would request from the Abia State Governor, Mr Alex Otti if he meets him one-on-one.

Profile

My name is Mr Dennis Emeka Ubani a PhD holder in mass Communication. And my areas of specialty are Public Relations and Advertising.

Assumption office as HOD

Being the HOD was of recent but I was part of the staff that started this programme, so I understand the department well. When you talk about Mass Communication, it is very broad family and thank God my school recently unbundled which means we now have some departments that have moved from the conventional Mass Communication to be a department on their own. So Mass Communication and school of media studies are now the family umbrella name. There are other areas like Advertising, Public Relations, Online Journalism, Media Studies among others. All of these are branches of Mass Communication.

Before I came in there were limited infrastructure, and luckily for us the Governor when he assumed office appointed the new Rector, Dr Christopher Okolie, a man knowledgeable about everything and as soon as he realized the challenges we had in the department, he didn’t waste time to provide them. Recently we had accreditation where all 39 programmes run by this school received full clean bill of health.

The other challenge is staffing but it is also being tackled.

Is Mass Comm. still relevant in the society today?

Maybe what you should have asked me is, is communication relevant in our world today? Without communication, there would be no existence. In fact, communication started right from time traced down to the first book of the Bible in Genesis. It was God and the trinity that started Mass Communication when they said let us make man in our own image. Remember communication is interpersonal, intra-personal and Mass Communication. Without communication existence wouldn’t have be. Just imagine in a family were everyone is dumb, what kind of family will that be? Imagine a society where nobody is communicating, how will the government know the problems of the Masses? So there is need for interexchange of feelings and opinions. People must talk, they must communicate. What we should talk about now is the international super highways, you talk about the internet, Goggle etc these are all modern communication channels. And anybody not in communication base is irrelevant in the society.

How old is Mass Communication in the OOP?

We’ve graduated 3 sets now. As a department, the course runs for five years, we have two years and one year break for our Industrial Training (IT) then they come back for another 2 years making it 5 years. Therefore, we are 8 years old here in Ogbonnaya Onu Polytechnic.

What are the advantages of unbundling Mass Communication?

During our days in school, it was really challenging, my set was the first set that studied Mass Communication in Abia State University. Around that time, there were doubts of textbooks, people were not writing (publishing textbooks) and we had issues getting books to read and with time we got them but it happened we had to read all the areas of Mass Communication as I earlier mention. So unbundling it makes it easier for people to choose the area where they are good at. I might be good in Broadcasting because my voice is good but not good in Advertising as well as other courses even film acting. And we have a department for that. The unbundling helps people to concentrate so as to become masters in what they do. It gives room to specialization.

What is the population of Mass Communication students in the OOP?

Every year, we don’t have the same number of students applying for the Programme, and this is a new year. We always have almost a thousand students and because of the way the Governor and the Rector have set up the system, I bet you we will have large number of students during this year’s intake.

If you meet the Governor today, what will be your request?

First I will thank him for being the governor of Abia State and for a job well done especially for appointing our new Rector. We do call him the game changer. But if I meet him today, the only request I will make is staffing. I will ask him to allow us to recruit more lecturers. We need more hands to handle the courses here in the department.