By Ajifa Solomon
The University of Jos has failed to reach a conclusive decision regarding the proposed merging of medical and dental students. The underlying reason for the indecision appears to be that dental students have missed out on academic work. This means that the hope of a possible graduation with their colleagues in MBBS has been dashed.
The dental students’ body also hinted that the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) has also refused the bid for a merger, saying that the university’s medical program is unaccredited. Medical and dental students are currently awaiting an MDCN visitation in June to secure accreditation for their respective programs.
Last week, the Jos University Dental Students Association (JUDENSA) took to the streets to protest the lack of accreditation of dentistry nine years after its cohort session. Following this, the Vice Chancellor, Ishaya Tanko scheduled a meeting with JUDENSA executives, the provost of the college of health sciences and other stakeholders to reach a decision on the way forward.
From the first meeting held on Wednesday, there were indications that the 1st and 2nd sets of dental students would be merged into the MBBS program, while continuous lectures were promised for the 3rd and 4th sets. The management also stated that the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN) was scheduled to conduct an accreditation exercise in June.
Sadly, none of these will come to fruition in the foreseeable future. The second meeting which was scheduled for April 24th but was held last Friday saw the university drawback on its previous promises.
According to JUDENSA, it was resolved that the 1st set of dental students who are supposedly in their final year now have to take up 113 weeks of lectures before graduation. The weeks will start counting whenever lectures commence.
The President of JUDENSA, Michael Agbaseni told UniJos Echo that, “The merger which they said is possible is no longer possible. And the working plan for lectures which we were promised are not in sight. Things are still as they were before the protest. The only thing that has changed is that we now have faint hope of accreditation in June.”
Agbaseni also clarified the claims that the merger has failed solely due to the lack of accreditation of MBBS.
“For some reason, there is an unwillingness on the side of the college to merge both programmes. It’s not about MDCN. There are a lot of details that are not very clear. We are now being told that we will spend more years in school if merged into the MBBS program. But even that is preferable because there is more certainty of graduation rather than being in the faculty where we don’t know when lectures will commence in full, not to mention when to graduate. We spent a long time deliberating this,” Agbaseni told the Echo.
He added that the reason for the proposal of a merger was to enable dental students to continue receiving lectures with medical students until graduation.
“So, even if MBBS is unaccredited right now, the students are still having lectures while we are not.
As it stands, no dental student in the school except for the 1st set has done any dental-related course besides oral biology and even that is a 200 level course. And even now, the faculty does not have the capacity to take on the practical aspects of oral biology,” he said.
He remarked that even if dentistry were to be accredited by June, the pioneer students would still have to spend 113 more weeks in school.
“Of course the years are gone and there’s nothing we can do,” Agbaseni said.
When asked if it was possible to transfer to another dental college, Agbaseni said it was almost impossible to do that.
“It is capital intensive both for the university and the students. Besides, there’s a limited number of dental colleges in the country and even those ones are struggling to stand. Imagine if more students were pushed to a struggling college. We considered that option but it’s just not possible,” he asserted.
However, the university public relations officer, Abdullai Abdullai told UniJos Echo that the university was still exploring possible options and had reached no definite decision. He said, “the university has no official position on the merger, only options are being explored. There has been no rejection or acceptance of anything.?”
In the midst of uncertainty, the university has urged all students to work together with the school management while waiting for the MDCN visitation in June.
