A school principal is a primary leader in a school administration. A principal always leads by example. A principal should possess positive charisma, enthusiastic, and is in charge of the day-to-day activities and running of the school.
A good principal listens to what the constituents are saying. An effective principal is available to teachers, staff members, parents, students, and community members at large.
All these factors and attributes make one tenable and ably qualified to become a school principal.
Having said that, It is highly against ethical conducts and very irrational that a principal of a public school will be running the affairs of the school as if it is a private school where she is probably the sole ownership. This is a clear case of someone bitting more than she can chew.
This whole scenario can be traced to the situation going on presently at Saint Comprehensive Secondary School Ikot Oku mfang Abak LGA Akwa Ibom state.
The school under the leadership of Mrs Nkoyo Eshiet as a principal for the past four to five years of her administration is actually crawling through standard ineptitude, ineffectiveness, dictatorship and is believed to be having the backing of the deputy governor whom she referred as “my political godfather.”
According to reports, Nkoyo has become so wild, primitive and violently unbecoming that she is currently at loggerheads with the host community of the school over a parcel of land. Reports said that the plot of land is already in court and the case is between the host community and a defendant who claims is the real owner of the land.
We learnt that while the matter is still in court, Mrs Nkoyo paid a lawyer who equally appeared in court, contesting the same parcel of land with the purpose of foreshadowing the land in court that the land neither belongs to the host community nor the claimer but belongs to the school. Unfortunately for her, we gathered from our reliable source that the court strikes out her submission, stating that whatever she submitted through her lawyer lacks Merit and does not have any element of truth in regards to the land.
The principal didn’t stop there. She approaches the court for the second time, insisting that the said land belongs to the school. We gathered from our source that her plea was struck out and the court awarded her a cost for attempting to defame the court order.
In a twist of events, Nkoyo invited and stationed some policemen on the said land and ordered students to clear the land for her personal use which is against the decision and order of the court.
More revelations have that desperate Nkoyo equally operates the school on illegitimate and illicit ways. She is alleged to be involved and engaging in examination malpractices, mistress and doing ‘runs’ of all kinds which leads to squeezing and milking from the parent’s pockets to enrich herself overnight
We learnt that when WAEC is free and sponsored by the state government, Nkoyo continued to extort money from the students. Investigation revealed that she billed the SS3 final year students to pay the sum of #5,500 each in a population of about 344 students awaiting to write the final exams.
A student of SS3 revealed this when we sampled our questions, she opened up that each of them is paying huge amount of money to the principal else she will not allow anyone who refused to comply to write the exams that for many years has been declared free and compulsory in the state.
When NEWSIE EVENT visited the home of one of the parent, a widow, mother of 6 children, she wept bitterly while narrating how she struggled to pay the demanding amount for her two children who are among the final year students. She also disclosed that for her two other children to gain admission into the same school she has to pay the sum of #8,500 for each which warrant her to pay the total amount of #17,000. even when the Government said Education is free and compulsory, …she broke into tears.
She said ” I am just a poor trader and a widow only God knows how I struggled to feed and cloth this children, I ask them to go to public school since education is free, at least it will enable me to look at other younger ones in the small nursery School since their father is not alive, but the sum of money I am paying for the head of these children in Ikot Oku mfang is as if they are in private school. If education is no longer free in Ikot Oku mfang, then I will remove my children to private school let me know that they are in paying school and I am paying their school fees in the private school”
During the course of the investigation, it was revealed also that Mrs Nkoyo is not in good relationship with her teachers, that some teachers have deliberately and vehemently boycotted the activities of the school to avoid having issues with her. After all, many of the students no longer attend classes neither coming to school because they already have this mindset that the principal is malpractice machinery and of course has the malpractices capacity. This according to our source made some students to completely abstain from lectures because they so much have confidence that “our principal will do runs for us” and consequently bastardising the effort of the teachers and make their teaching useless and abortive.
Moreover, we gathered that her tenure and time for retirement have long been due but she kept manipulating her credentials and ages deduction to keep her in active service.
NEWSIE EVENT gathered that Mrs Nkoyo Eshiet has been bragging that nobody has the power and monopoly to overthrown her neither workout her transfer out from Saint Comprehensive Secondary School Ikot Oku mfang because the deputy governor is her godfather. She uses the deputy governor as her weapons to intimidates and threatens people of the community who seems to revolt against her misconducts. On some occasions, she attacked some teachers that are not in supports of her irregularities, oppression and tyrannic order of piloting the affairs of the school.
Our source, with annoyance, explained that Nkoyo is very incompetent and have failed completely in her duties but only uses her friendliness or closeness to the deputy governor as her stronghold.
There have been instances where she hit her hand on her chest and said that she will leave the school whenever she wants to and not by the action of the community. Our source alleged that the deputy governor is solely responsible and behind all her nonchalant, arrogant and disrespectful misconducts against the leadership of the host community otherwise she would have long been suspended or retired from service.
“As for who and where she got the order from to parade the police into the community and where she derived her power from to penetrate and step into the community land against the contempt of the court we will surely get back to her and we implore her to inform her deputy governor on this warpath and confrontation that she has finally open against the community and the court order,” said our source.