Education minister’s action killing sector, says group

A non-governmental organisation, Concerned Citizens for Educational Development (CCED), has accused Minister of Education Mallam Adamu Adamu of initiating policies that impact negatively on the sector.

The group said unless urgent steps are taken to reverse them, the nation’s educational sector will be heading for an implosion.

In an April 26 letter to the minister signed by the group’s National Convener, Comrade Solomon Adodo, the CCED expressed concerns that since the former vice-chancellors of 13 new federal universities were wrongfully sacked by the minister, many of the succeeding vice-chancellors have borrowed a leaf from the minister by continuing to flout the relevant universities rules. They have been sidelining the governing councils in most academic appointments, the letter alleged

The unfortunate implications of this, according to the group, is that merit is unwittingly being replaced by mediocrity, while ineptitude and intimidation prevails, even as academic excellence and scholarship continues to take the back seat in our institutions of higher learning.

Using the case of the Federal University of Lokoja as a case, the group alleged that the new Vice-Chancellor, being a product of the unilateral appointment by the education minister, has continued to make other appointments in the school, including the Deputy Vice Chancellor without recourse to the institution’s governing council as provided by the act setting up the school.

The group also listed the appointment by the minister of the new Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Oye Ekiti, who is a retiree professor, noting that the extant laws setting up the federal universities does not permit such an appointment.

It further cited the case of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) with a unique establishment act, where the newly appointed vice chancellor of the institution has set in motion, a plan to reduce the academic standard of the school by attempting to scrap some study centres of the institution, meant to cater for the academically unreached persons in Nigeria.

It also criticised the new VC of NOUN for contravening due process and the statute setting up the school by appointing the Director of Media and Protocol for the university without placing any form of advertorial or conferring with any other relevant organ within the university system.

The group regretted that, “The flagrant attitude of the newly appointed VCs are bolstered by the fact that they are not answerable to any other body within or outside the universities, since their appointments were friendly compensation from the Minister of Education.”