The Rector exited following the upgrade of the institution to the University of Science and Technology.

The government announced plans to convert the Delta State Polytechnic, as well as other Colleges of Education to a full university.

Consequently, the Rector had to step down for another to be appointed, a move that has pleased the students.

Videos and photos posted online show the jubilant students sweeping the main gate to express their happiness.

Others gathered at the main gate to simply cheer their colleagues on.

This is reportedly due to the treatment they were receiving under the past Rector and for that, they were symbolically sweeping away all of his remains.

Video below:

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He said this while addressing the opening ceremony of a two-day training programme organised by the African Centre of International Criminal Justice (ACICJ) at the GIMPA Law Faculty for journalists.

Professor Bondzi-Simpson, addressing the delegation from 10 African countries, emphasised the role of journalists on issues of violence on the continent.

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“Giving regard to issues of violence that have occurred on the African continent in recent past such as in Burundi and the role journalists have played in the occurrence or otherwise of these crimes, it is time for media practitioners to pay greater attention to the way and manner they go about their profession.

“Journalists have had a significant role in either igniting or dousing the conflagrations,” Prefessor Bondzi-Simpson said.

He proceeded to ask some rethorical questions, “What do we report and how do we report? Do we analyse? Do we sensationalise? Do we trigger or do we educate, heal and restore?

“Journalism definitely is critical to how society will run and unfold and an appreciation by the practitioners and the students of journalism is critical,” the GIMPA Rector added.

The Netherlands Ambassador

The training programme, titled ‘International Criminal Law and Justice: An Overview,’ was put together by the ACICJ (GIMPA) in collaboration with the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Ghana.

In his message of support, the Ambassador of the Netherlands to Ghana, Ron Strikker, indicated that with the Netherlands being the host country of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Embassy finds it very necessary to support every effort to educate journalists who are the watchdogs of society as far as impunity is concerned.

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He charged the journalists participating in the training programme to take full advantage of same and learn everything they ought to know about the ICC in order to use the knowledge to influence their reportage on the prosecution of international crimes.

The training programme

The two-day training programme will have eight sessions, the last of which will be a panel discussion on the topic, ‘Cyber Security, Crime, and Jurisdiction in Cyberspace: The Future of International Crime.’

The panelist for the discussion will include Elvis Kofi Hovor, a Cyber Security & Crime Expert, Dr Yankson, Head of the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ghana Police Service, Dr Nnenna Ifeanyi-Ajufo, Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Lancaster University, Ghana, Jean-Jacques Badibanga, Senior Trial Lawyer of the International Criminal Court and Dahirou Sant-Anna, International Cooperation Advisor of the ICC.

The remaining sessions will amongst others consider topics such as ‘Covering International Crimes: The Role of the Media’, and ‘Overview of the International Criminal Court: Structure, Jurisdiction and Preliminary Examinations’. Additionally, the remaining sessions will focus on ‘Basics of International Criminal Law and Justice: Getting to Know and Understand International Crimes and Practice at the ICC: Trials and Cases’.

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The ACICJ

The ACICJ is dedicated to growing the body of knowledge on International Criminal Law & Justice (ICLJ), its necessity and the place of Africa within that paradigm. The ACICJ was conceived as a result of the success of the International Criminal Court (ICC) & Africa Conference held at GIMPA in March, 2016.

The aim of the ACICJ is to center the ongoing discourse on Africa’s role and place in the work of the ICC as it applies to the continent.

The Centre hopes to formalise the network of conference participants as well as International Criminal Law Scholars from all over the world to sustain the conversation, engaging the greater ICLJ community, as well as serve as a focal point for ongoing research, scholarship and training on the ICC and broader ICLJ issues across the continent.

Scores of students of the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) were barred from taking part in on-going end-of-semester exams due to their inability to pay their fees in full.

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The situation resulted in a temporal closure of the institution following students agitations that resulted in authorities bringing the police.

Reacting to what led to the chaos on Adom FM’s Dwaso Nsem show Monday, Professor Kwansah-Aidoo explained that the payment of the fees as a precondition for writing the semester’s exams was not a new principle in the school.

“We are only enforcing the rule which has been there. The percentage has always been 80/ 20 for freshers and 60/40 for continuing students. So we were expecting the students to honour the agreement to pay the facility user fee as stated in their admission letter,” he noted.

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According to him, the management of the school, in their bid to getting all students to sit for the semester’s exams, extended the deadline on several occasions.

“We extended the deadlines to create more room for students who had registered to do so because the SRC told us the students were raising concerns so we thought it wise not to be unreasonable but to grant their requests,” he added.

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Trouble broke out on the GIJ campus on Sunday, December 3, 2018, after some students were locked out and refused the chance to write their end of semester examinations.

It took the intervention of the police for the situation to be brought under control but not after the examinations were cancelled.

This new arrangement was revealed by the Rector of the school, Professor Kwamena Kwansah-Aidoo at a students’ durbar last Friday.

Initially, there was a scheduled period on the academic calendar for the rewriting of failed papers.

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But addressing the students, Prof. Kwansah-Aidoo maintained that the practice was not a usual one in other universities running the semester system.

He further explained that the provision of a room for the writing of resit examination gives room for students to be lazy during examinations, thereby causing them to fail.

According to him, the move is aimed at encouraging students to work hard and pass their end of semester exams.

“…in my experience, nowhere in the world do we run a semester system and then have to resit of examination as well. It is an encouragement for people to mess up…it baffles me that anybody would go and write an exam in the hope they’ll go and repeat that exam; it is not a good idea” – he stated.

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He thus admonished the students to aim to pass their exams at the first attempt.

“…aim to get it out of the way once and for all and that’s it. So management has decided that after this year, we would not have resit examinations again.” – he said.

This new directive implies that any student who fails in a course would have to wait till the next academic year when that course is being offered before he/she can write the exams.

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Example; if a Level 100 student fails in any of his courses in the second semester of the academic year, he would have to wait the next academic year’s second semester and register for that course again.