Pantami: More Trouble For FUTO VC As ASUU ‘Nullifies’ Minister’s Professorship

The Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri (FUTO), Prof. Nnenna Oti, is set to be punished by the highest body of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over her alleged promotion of Isa Ali Pantami, the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, as a professor of cybersecurity.

This comes as the ASUU’s National Executive Council declared Pantami’s professorship as illegal at a press conference on Monday.

The union’s president, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke, who presided over the conference said the body will “sanction ASUU members involved in his promotion and the VC of FUTO.”

The Punch quoted Osodeke as saying, “You cannot be a minister and a lecturer in a university. It is an encouragement of illegality.

“Pantami has to quit as a minister and be tried for doing double jobs within the same federal system. He is not qualified. Pantami should not be treated as a professor.”

Meanwhile, the move by ASUU is coming a few months after it rejected the report submitted by a committee in its Owerri, Imo State chapter, on the appointment of Pantami as a professor by the FUTO management.

“ASUU NEC members, like many other concerned Nigerians, did not accept the report of the ASUU FUTO congress. There are serious doubts and unanswered questions bordering on the qualification of Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim (Pantami) for the position. The FUTO Branch Committee’s report failed to justify Dr. Isah Ali Ibrahim’s (Pantami’s) appointment to professor on the basis of requisite experience, professional suitability, and antecedents at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (ATBU),” Osodeke had told journalists in Abuja in November 2021.

The FUTO Alumni Association National Executive Council had in September queried the university’s management over the minister’s promotion.

The association had requested “the records of the proceedings of the University Governing Council meeting at which this appointment was made” as well as the “Details of the academic publications by Mr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami on which basis he was examined and offered this appointment.”