UNILAG: SSANU Faults FG’s Visitation Panel

The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has faulted the Special Visitation Panel set up by the Federal Government to probe the crisis rocking the University of Lagos.

Recall that the Federal Ministry of Education had last week directed the the Chairman of the Governing Council Chairman of the school, Wale Babalakin, and the embattled Vice-Chancellor, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, to step aside for its panel to probe the management crisis unsettling the institution.

“While SSANU appreciates the prompt intervention of the Visitor in the ongoing crisis and the sincere efforts in nipping the crisis in the bud, the directives of the Visitor as contained in the press release have a further tendency to cause more crisis as issues bordering on due process and fair hearing have been trampled upon arising from the Visitor’s directive under reference,” SSANU’ President, Comrade Samson Chijioke Ugwoke, said in a statement on Monday.

Recall that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), UNILAG chapter, had backed the embattled Ogundipe.

SSANU observed that the composition and membership of the visitation penal, which consists of ASUU members and former VCs would be biased with their findings.

“It is our informed observation therefore, that a fair and unbiased panel, representative of all stakeholders in the University system should have included at least a retired Registrar, a retired Bursar, and a prominent individual with undoubted integrity, who should be a former Pro-chancellor and not a professor, as chairman of the panel.

“With the present composition and membership of the panel, the federal government may have unwittingly handed over the panel to ASUU to return victory to its members and condemn all others,” it claimed.

SSANU also faulted the directive given by FG, that the university’s Senate should choose an acting VC.

It maintained that it “conflicts with Paragraph 3(III) of the same Visitor’s directive.”

“An interesting dimension to the Visitor’s directive to convene a Senate meeting without a Vice Chancellor in place is an aberration as the Registrar is not empowered by any law to summon Senate unilaterally,” it added.

However, SSANU urged the federal government not to lose sight of the alleged corrupt practices bedeviling the school.

Its statement partly reads: “SSANU while not unconcerned about the principles of natural justice i.e. fair hearing and due process in the removal of professor Ogundipe as Vice Chancellor of UNILAG, is equally worried that the underlying allegations of fraud and corrupt practices seem to be lost due to technicalities.

“Government should be concerned that the major agitation of the loudest voices in the University system has always been that of poor funding of the University system.”