Anger As LASU VC Celebrates 1,095 Days In Office

Fashola and Obafunwa

The decision of the Vice-Chancellor, Lagos State
University, Ojo, Prof. John Obafunwa, to
celebrate his three years in office generates ill

feeling on campus, CHARLES ABAH writes
Lagos State University, Ojo never ceases to be in
the news. If it is not for a strike by its members
of staff, it will be for a protest by the students. If
it is not a cultism-related problem, it is the
students kicking against the hike in tuition or
protesting their exclusion from examinations. In
fact, agitation seems to be a recurring decimal in
the 30-year-old institution.
But this time, those at the helms of the affairs in
the university believe it is in the news for the
right cause. Reason: the Vice-Chancellor, Prof.
John Obafunwa, only last Wednesday, celebrated
his 1,095 days in office. The celebration was not
without pomp and ceremony and the VC did not
miss that opportunity to present a scorecard of
his administration to the public.
The Visitor to the university and Governor of
Lagos, Babatunde Fashola, appointed Obafunwa
as the VC three years ago.
Obafunwa’s introductory remarks at the
elaborate ceremony that started at the
institution’s new auditorium and ended with a
cocktail at the VC’s Quadrangle captured the
essence of the gathering.
He said, “I am delighted to warmly welcome you
to this important event and to give an account of
my stewardship as the Vice-Chancellor of the
Lagos State University in the last 1, 095 days. It
is necessary and equally significant because the
role of evaluation/appraisal in the life of any
organisation or individual can never be
overemphasised. The answer is to show the
public, members of staff, students and the world
at large the highlights of our administration,
innovation and strides in the last years.
“As the saying goes, ‘The very first step in
achieving prosperity and wealth is learning to
appreciate what you already have.’ It is against
this backdrop that I will like to say that the
university, in the last three years, has undergone
tremendous transformation in terms of academic
and non-academic activities. As a university, we
have recorded some groundbreaking and
monumental feats in the course of translating
our challenges into opportunities.
“On assumption of office, our administration set
out and has continued to pursue, without
distraction, a strong mission on the LASU
project: to reposition the university for excellence
and repackage its academic programmes for the
purpose of fulfilling the contemporary academic
needs and challenges of the 21st century and
making our graduates employable and employers
of labour.”
But ‘Tell that to the marines’ appears to be the
reaction of other stakeholders in the ivory tower.
For this school of thought, the VC’s
commemoration is nothing but “a carnival and a
sham”. Leading the pack of those who frowned
on the elaborate ceremony were members of the
local chapter of the Academic Staff Union of the
Universities and the Senior Staff Union of the
Universities.
In fact, to show that ASUU members did not
pretend about their dislike of the carnival, they
took their protest to the venue of the ceremony.
According to them, the authorities cannot
pretend that all is well in the school where a
“culture of impunity” is the name of the game.
In the leaflets conveying their grievances, the
lecturers pointed to a long list of what they
considered the “sins” of the VC. For instance,
they accused the Obafunwa-led administration of
destroying academic values and virile student
unionism, as well as enforcing the illegal
retirement of professors.
Besides, they alleged that his leadership engaged
in interdiction (a criminal offence committed
within or outside the university) of staff
members, irregular appointment of staff to
sensitive positions and doctoring of documents
and conditions of service.

Noting that “a student cannot be his own
examiner”, they also stated that the VC engaged
in the “no vacancy, no promotion policy” as well
as in selective promotion of his cronies to
sensitive positions in the university.
Specifically, in one of the leaflets signed by the
ASUU-LASU Chairman and the Secretary,
Adekunle Idris, and Dr. A. Adeyemi-Suenu,
respectively, the union said, “ASUU-LASU hereby
distances itself from the activities of the 1,095
days in office being celebrated by the VC, Prof.
John Obafunwa. Such activities are not only
self-serving, they are also alien to the tenets and
culture of the academic community worldwide.
The ‘gown’ is to give leadership to the ‘town’;
and not to import the condemnable acts of the
decadent society into the academia.
“Aside from the above, the LASU community is
not oblivious of the fact that there is hardly
anything worthy of celebrating in the current
‘reverse-geared’ Obafunwa-led administration.
Three professors from the Faculty of Education
held inaugural lectures and the VC did not attend
any of them. Yet we are always eager for ariya/
owambe celebrations with self-assessed
scorecards. We weep for Project Nigeria if the
academic cream of the society can celebrate
mediocrity with so much relish.
“The celebration of 1,095 days in office is not
part of the culture of reputable academic
institutions. ASUU-LASU condemns this
aberration in strong terms. LASU needs true
academics to give true leadership – not
politicians in academic gowns. Let us join hands
to build a strong university on a solid
foundation.”
Similarly, the SSANU-LASU Chairman, Mr.
Saheed Oseni, criticised the ceremony, alleging
that the citadel of learning was gradually
becoming a political institution.
He said, “For us in SSANU, there is nothing to
celebrate because LASU is a university
community not a political gathering where
politicians celebrate their days in office. What we
should be celebrating is academic excellence.
What happened last Wednesday was just a
jamboree and waste of fund.”
The VC, Oseni said, should occupy himself with
addressing the students and workers’ needs,
such as paying them their arrears of salaries and
attending to their other pressing needs instead of
counting the number of days he had spent in
office.
The students were also part of the drama. Some
of the content of their leaflets read, “Let us
celebrate him because he brought about
increment in tuition fees by 200 per cent”; “Let
us celebrate him because his tenure experienced
the highest number of drop-outs in the history of
LASU”; “Let us celebrate him because many
parents have yet to pay back the money they
borrowed because of tuition”; and ‘Let us
celebrate him because he is still owing us money
and he will refund us by fire by force”.
But the Student Union Government President,
Nurudeen Yusuf, has denied the claim that the
leaflets came from the union leadership. Though
there were outstanding issues on campus, the
success story of the VC, Yusuf said, was worth
celebrating.
He said, “It is worthy to celebrate an occasion
such as this. It is good for the VC to come up
with his scorecard in tune with the culture of
Governor Babatunde Fashola. Accepted that
there are festering issues that emanated even
long he became the VC, we must not all the time
engage in the blame game. It must not be
condemnation all the time.”
Ahead of last week’s celebration, the Lagos
ASUU Zonal Coordinator, Dr. Sola Nasir, had in a
meeting with journalists accused the LASU VC of
highhandedness.
Nasir noted that the LASU authorities, under the
superintendence of Obafunwa, rather than
entrench best academic practices, had resorted
to fanning the embers of crises and discord in
the institution.

He said, “The Lagos State University is again
sitting on a keg of gun powder that is only
waiting for time to explode. The university
administration is encouraging a culture of
anarchy and disorderliness in LASU through
obnoxious policies and rape of rules. We doubt if
the vice-chancellor is aware that Lagos State
needs and desires peace mostly at this time. We
are forced to think that Prof John Obafunwa, the
vice-chancellor, possibly has a different agenda
for LASU and Lagos State.”
Even as the celebrations go on, the authorities
are still having a running battling with some
members of staff and the students. For instance,
there is the withdrawal of the doctoral degree
certificates of 14 senior lecturers of the
university, including that of the incumbent ASUU
Chairman, Idris, as well as the interdiction of a
professor of French, Tunde Fatunde.
Fatunde, according to ASUU, has been on half
salary for some months reportedly on the
instructions of the VC.
Apart from regular students expecting a refund of
their tuition in line with the new fee regime,
others on external programmes are kicking that
many years after completing their studies, they
have yet to obtain their certificates from the
university.
However, the VC has described many of the
allegations as baseless. For example, he
admitted that the authorities withdrew the PhD
certificates because their issuance, in the first
place, was in error.
Obafunwa said, “The certificates were products
of the long rot in the system which I met when I
came on board as a VC and we need to correct
them now that we have discovered the error.
How do you go about with a certificate in a
course that does not exist in the university? That
cannot be again in LASU.”



Like This Article? Please Like Us On FACEBOOK