Boosting scholarship at Fed Poly Nekede through healthy environment

• Published date: 19 January 2023
• Publication title: Nigeria - The Nation

The environment has become a metaphor at the centre of global discourse and concern.

In the last four years as eighth Rector of the Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, Dr. Michael Arimanwa, has paid a studied attention to the environmental sector of the trail-blazing institution.

The environment, a totality of the surroundings, geographical well-being and physical conditions in a place, is at the heart of any enduring infrastructural initiative. Most transformational leaders are often associated with conscious efforts aimed at strengthening and revamping the environment.

Global institutions have since realised the psychic role played by the environment to humanity, hence the calculated investment in the sector. In the sphere of literature, critics such as William Rueckert and Cheryl Glotfelty have advocated a new epistemic form called Ecocriticism, which seeks to interrogate the relationship between literature and the environment.

Already, a nexus has been established between security and environment, making studies in environment a multi-disciplinary one. From the beginning, Dr. Arimanwa had factored the environment as a sector to be given priority attention.

An educational institution should at least have an environment that encourages scholarship going by its physical and psychic ambiance. Being a structural engineer of repute and an alumnus of the polytechnic, the scholar and cleric swung into action.

He first took a critical assessment of the decrepit access roads leading to the institution.

The major road leading to the polytechnic from Owerri-Aba Road was in bad condition.This was unbefitting of the ideal institution he had envisioned. There was then an erosion menace threatening the institution from within and without. Inside the polytechnic, there were untarred roads with their muddiness in the rainy season and dustiness in the dry season.

Again, there was the need to expand the drainage infrastructure of the polytechnic to expel water when it rained. Generally, therefore, the environment Arimanwa met was unhealthy.

The rector did not hesitate in building bridges and collaborating with relevant stakeholders to have a healthy environment he so envisioned. First, he visited the government of Imo State with his management team, where he drew the attention of the government to the worsening condition of Nekede-Ihiagwa Road, which is the arterial road leading to the polytechnic. True to his name, Governor Hope Uzodinma granted their request and gave them hope.

The...