The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU), has called for the re-composition of the Special Visitation Panel set up by President Muhammad Buhari to look into the purported removal of Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe as Vice- of the University of Lagos.
SSANU President, Mr. Samson Ugwoke, made the call on Monday in a letter addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari, Minister of Education and the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission.
The letter was titled, ‘Observations on the visitor’s setting up special visitation panel at the University of Lagos and ordering of a special senate meeting of the university: A call for a review.’
According to Ugwoke the composition of the panel favoured the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which is a complainant in the matter.
It read, “The crisis in the University of Lagos has the Academic Staff Union of Universities as a major participant. Indeed, ASUU is the complainant in this matter.
“The composition of the Special Visitation Panel with a preponderance of professors (ASUU members) is an indication that the decisions of the panel would be tampered with by ASUU.
“The fact that they are former vice-chancellors also implies the tendency to protect one of their own – an embattled vice-chancellor.
“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.
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“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 member and condemn all others.
“SSANU, therefore, calls for a re-composition of the panel to reflect neutrality, fairness and proper representation and not using ASUU to probe itself as the situation currently is.
“The principle of natural justice is lost in the present composition of the visitation panel and it is totally condemned by SSANU.”
Ugwuoke, meanwhile commended the intention of the visitor by directing the recusal of the Pro- Chancellor and Professor Ogundipe from official duties during the period of the visitation, presumably to enforce peace in the university pending the outcome of the visitation.
However, he said SSANU wished to point out that the visitor may have inadvertently fallen into the ASUU position of seeing Dr. Wale Babalakin as the problem of the University of Lagos.
“To the best of our knowledge, the decision to remove Professor Ogundipe was a decision of council and not Babalakin.
“It would have been fairer if the visitor had directed the entire council to recuse itself from official duties until the end of the panel’s assignment than asking Babalakin alone to recuse himself.
“We wish to therefore observe that this directive personalises the decisions of council to Dr. Babalakin, which in itself does not do justice to the issues on ground,” he said.
