Rescuing the University of Nigeria, keeping to the rules and advancing to a new order

Amongst the Igbo, there is a saying that if a taboo festers through a season and finds accommodation, it becomes a tradition. The desecration of the university system in Nigeria by political leaders is entering cruising altitude and is fast transitioning to a tradition. In the front line of this emerging management/government-inflicted entropy appears to be the University of Nigeria. This first generation and first autonomous university in Nigeria is also the one that gave the Nigerian university system its foundation or mother laws. One that is, today, treated with disdain at the same university. Due to acts of omission and commission, this foundation and time-tested law are now being thrown to the dogs. By June 9, 2025, the university would have been one year without a substantive vice chancellor but would have witnessed the regimes of three acting vice chancellors. Three birds of passage, building or wreaking havoc as they may see fit, with only lame supervision.

“The process was inevitably going to be a shameful bazaar, without any regard for ethics or merit.”

Following the removal of General Ike Nwachukwu as Chairman of the Governing Council, along with two of his colleagues and the Acting Vice Chancellor Prof. PE Chigbu, who was appointed by the Council in August 2024, another six months of temporary administration has been inflicted on the university. There is no basis in law, precedence, practice or even common sense for what is playing out. The law provides for what should happen in the event that a vacancy occurs in the office of the vice chancellor when one may not be readily appointed. The Council, upon the advice of the university Senate, shall appoint an acting vice chancellor (who shall serve in the office for six months and no more). This has played out twice in the last few months at the university. First, following the expiration of the tenure of the last substantive Vice Chancellor, Prof C.A. Igwe, at a time when Council was not in place, the Senate (upon the call of the Honourable Minister of Education) elected one of the Deputy Vice Chancellors, Prof R.O. Ezeokonkwo, as acting Vice Chancellor. Within two months of his election, the Federal Government empanelled the Council of Gen. Nwachukwu.

Upon inauguration, the Council invited the Senate to nominate five persons for consideration for appointment as Acting Vice Chancellor. Amongst other requirements, such nominees, being above the age of 65, shall not be eligible to be considered for appointment as substantive Vice Chancellor. From an illustrious list of five, the Council appointed the top scoring candidate, Professor PE Chigbu, former Director of Academic Planning, former Dean of the Postgraduate School and former Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic), as the acting vice chancellor. His tenure was to end on February 16, 2025, before he was removed on the 6th of the same month along with the Chairman of the Council and two other external members.

Having set the machinery in motion for the appointment of a substantive vice chancellor, the council, by its own timetable, was to interview their shortlisted candidates on 12th February and make an appointment between 13 and 14 February 2025. Although this process is now avoidably suspended, it is a welcome development that Gen Nwachukwu was removed as chairman of the UNN Council. This is because it came to light that he was beholden to the Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodinma, who was hell-bent on having Professor Bond Anyaehie, sibling of his chief of staff, appointed the Vice Chancellor of the university. The common understanding within the university was that the process would have been compromised beyond acceptability, in particular given that the advert for the position and the CV template deployed had been skewed to accommodate Professor Anyaehie. Even worse was that rather than ensure a rigorous merit-based shortlisting process, the Council further bent backwards to accommodate the candidates of other political office holders. The process was inevitably going to be a shameful bazaar, without any regard for ethics or merit.

Now, a new Acting Vice Chancellor in the person of Professor OT Ujam has been appointed for the university by fiat, via a letter signed by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education (in itself a fairly unusual route for dealing with the universities in such matters). This came about without regard to due process and convention nor any input from the university Senate as required by law.

But worse is that the permanent secretary by the appointment letter goes on to provide a curious and extremely suspicious term of reference: “You are required to facilitate the process for the emergence of the substantive vice chancellor of the university before the end of your tenure in acting capacity.” Although the vice chancellor is an ex-officio member of the governing council, it is not known that he is expected to participate in any way, tacitly or overtly, in the appointment of his successor in office, and much less facilitate. No self-respecting council will accept that either. To do otherwise would amount to asking a vice chancellor, who in any case has considerable control over university finances, to appoint his preferred candidate as his/her successor. The fact that the same letter stated “you are not eligible to apply for the post of substantive Vice Chancellor of the University whenever it is advertised by the Governing Council” is diversionary and too clever by half. Prof. Ujam’s professorship is only 6 years, and there is no way he would have qualified to be considered.

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Now how did the Permanent Secretary come about Prof Ujam? He is the politically exposed gadfly who wrote or signed off on all the political publications and articles in furtherance of the gubernatorial campaign of Barrister Peter Mba, Governor of Enugu State, and since. During the last process to elect the four Senate Representatives in the Governing Council, which was held on November 13th, 2024, Prof Ujam contested and scored only 55 votes, placing nearly at the bottom of the list and outperforming only 2 of the 18 candidates who stood for election. Over the last few weeks, this bright academic has been unabashedly the point man for the efforts of the Governor of Enugu State to have his protégé, a certain Professor Simon Ortuanya, Dean of Law at Enugu State University of Science and Technology and former Secretary to the Enugu State Government, appointed as the Vice Chancellor of the University of Nigeria.

The effort to impose Ortuanya on the University of Nigeria is at the centre of the struggle that culminated in the removal of General Ike Nwachukwu as Chairman of the Governing Council. It was also the effort at having Ortuanya that led the Council to dispense with the time-tested protocol whereby Vice Chancellorship candidates are benchmarked against the requirements for promotion to Professorship of the University of Nigeria as a shortlisting requirement. Professor Ortuanya left the University of Nigeria as a Lecturer I to become a professor at ESUT. Benchmarked against guidelines for promotion as used at UNN, his current CV will at best secure him a position of senior lecturer. This is the candidate that the Enugu State Government wants to inflict on the Governing Council and the University of Nigeria as the next vice chancellor.

Given what is in the public domain about the Honourable Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, it is possible that he is not aware of these subterranean political machinations. In the interest of the University of Nigeria, he now should be. The Enugu State government has orchestrated the removal of Gen Nwachukwu as Chairman of Council for seeking to impose a mediocrity in the person of Prof Anyaehie as Vice Chancellor of UNN but curiously wants to have a worse academic mediocrity appointed to that position. The new Chairman of Council, Engr. Kayode O. Ojo, has been sought out by the Federal Government to come to UNN to implement a process that apparently challenged the capacity of an army general. He must show that he is the ethically sound technocrat by ensuring that merit is given pride of place in this process.

The University of Nigeria should not have as vice chancellor an academic who, if assessed by the standards of the university, can barely make it to the rank of senior lecturer. The new Chairman of Council must do well to protect the integrity and academic standing of the university and, in particular, save her from falling into an avoidable crisis. No one wants a repeat of the recent events at the (Yakubu Gowon) University of Abuja at UNN. As a person, he must show that he can effectively carry out this task that overwhelmed an army general.

Dr Anthony Asogwa contributed this piece from Abuja.