•Varsity workers begin strike over pay
Yekeen Nurudeen, Abuja, Ademola Babalola, Ibadan & Joshua Dada, Osogbo
THE National Universities Commission (NUC) has threatened to withdraw the licence of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Ogbomoso, if its management, as well as the governments of Oyo and Osun states - joint owners of the university-failed to resolve their differences over its ownership within two weeks.
The university has been at the centre of a controversy between Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala of Oyo State and his counterpart in Osun State, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola.
According to the NUC Executive Secretary, Professor Julius Okojie, who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja, while speaking at The Mock-Institutional Accreditation Coordination Meeting, the commission would withdraw the university’s recognition if after two weeks, it failed to meet up with its requirements.
He lamented that as a result of the crisis, students could not go to the university for Post-UME Examination, while lecturers too are no longer teaching, adding that commission was worried about who the Vice Chancellor is at the moment.
However, while speaking on the proposed institutional accreditation expected to take off before the end of the year, former NUC Executive Secretary, Professor Peter Okebukola, said that, at least, five per cent of the existing 104 universities across the country would be closed down at the end of the exercise.
He explained that all the universities that scored 40 per cent at the end of the exercise would be denied institutional accreditation, adding that the NUC has concluded plans to begin a pilot scheme of the exercise in six selected universities across the country by next month.
Okebukola noted that such universities would be literally closed down and have to redeem all the deficiencies that were found before they could be re-opened.
His words: “The institution is a lot more than the programmes that we go to accredit during programmes accreditation. In pursuit of this goal, some of us travelled outside the country to see what the practice is and we found that all the universities that are listed among the top 500 were located in countries where institutional accreditation is practised.
“Countries where you do only programmes accreditation, you hardly can find the universities will excel and climb up in the league table among the well- recognised universities of the world.
“Quality in the nation’s university system would be boosted, if institutional accreditation is sustained and the universities will continue to rise up the league table.
“There are some universities in Nigeria that look like glorified secondary schools, but all of them would disappear when the exercise takes off fully.
“In 2006, when the World Bank and UNESCO organised a world conference on institutional accreditation, it was reported in Chile that as a consequence of institutional accreditation, 36 universities were closed permanently. Other countries also reported that universities were closed down as a result of the exercise.
“In Russia, I read in the Chronicle of Higher Education that about 14 universities are being processed for final closure.
We must continue to move in the direction whereby only the fittest will survive in a world of higher education.”
He added that if the affected universities eventually failed to meet up with the set standards by the NUC after a given period of time, they would remain closed, stressing that some universities would be placed on probation to operate for one year.
This, Okebukola explained, would go on until a university scores up to 80 per cent, gets A+ and is given a full accreditation, saying “with that full accreditation, you are good to go for 10 full years before a team comes in to visit you”.
He likened institutional accreditation to a complete medical check-up, which, according to him, checks all the organs of the universities after which a certificate is issued to the qualified ones to operate.
Meanwhile, a fresh trouble for the embattled LAUTECH resurfaced yesterday, as the Joint Action Congress (JAC) of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT), and the Non-Academic Staff of Universities(NASU) of the institution began an indefinite strike over the alleged non-implementation of a new salary structure for their members by the owner state governments.
The JAC, in a statement jointly signed by Comrade Badmus Olusegun of NASU and two others, accused the owner states of not ready to meet up with its members’ demands in line with what was agreed upon by the Federal Government and university unions in July, 2009.
Olusegun, Akinola Aderemi and Adeyinka Adegboyega, in the statement, vowed that members of the congress are not ready to go back to work “until the management of the university is ready to implement the new salary structure”.
JAC lamented that members of all the industrial unions in the institution were made to wait endlessly in the past eight months for the implementation of the new salary.
It, however, called on the owner states to look for a way of urgently resolving the non-implementation of the new structure “by paying all the arrears” owed the workers in the interest of the institution’s students and members of staff.
As the rumour of an alleged attack on the citizens of Osun State serving at LAUTECH spread yesterday, Osun State Government warned against such act, calling on its Oyo State counterpart to embrace peace.
A statement issued by the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Niyi Owolade, said the warning had become necessary following reports of assaults on the office of the university’s Acting Registrar, Mr. Olusegun Ojo, by some agents of the Oyo State Government.
The statement added that the attorney-general had been informed that certain persons, claiming to be officials of the university, had locked up Ojo’s office, saying the acting registrar is the only principal officer of the university from Osun State.
Owolade then called on security agencies to protect the lives and property of all Osun State indigenes in Ogbomoso, while assuring the workers and students of the institution of the commitment of his state government to bringing peace to the university.
The attorney-general further expressed the commitment of the Oyinlola administration to the rule of law in resolving the ownership crisis, even as he urged stakeholders in the country to prevail on the Oyo State Government “not to destroy the university with its intransigence”.
Also yesterday, it was gathered that Prof. J. O. Ojediran has rejected his appointment by Oyinlola as the Acting Vice-Chancellor of the university.
A statement signed by Alao-Akala’s Special Adviser on Public Communications, Prince Dotun Oyelade, reads: “The rejection of the Greek Gift mischievously offered to Prof. J. O. Ojediran, the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of LAUTECH, by Governor Oyinlola graphitises the futility and limits of foolhardiness. Upon receipt of Governor Oyinlola’s letter yesterday, Governor Akala promptly replied him to clarify the true position on the Visitorship issue.
“Governor Akala also pointed out the procedural error in the Visitor directly announcing the appointment of a vice-chancellor as was done by Governor Oyinlola, thereby usurping the functions of the Governing Council.
“The Visitor only approves the appointment of the Vice-Chancellor upon recommendation by the Council. Such embarrassment can be avoided in future if only the Osun State Government would come back to the negotiating table and iron out all the issues in brotherly manner before the NUC makes good its threat.”
