By Ayo Kehinde
UNILAG Acting VC, Prof Ogunsola
Professor Folashade Ogunsola, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Development Services has emerged Acting- Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, following an election by the institution’s Senate on Monday.
Ogunsola who vied for the position with another Deputy Vice-Chancellors from Management Services, got 135 votes out of 167 to defeat her opponent who got 31 votes. One voided vote was recorded.
Her election followed an intervention in the deepening leadership crisis in the College by its visitor, President Muhammedu Buhari, who through the Ministry of Education urged the combatants to step aside until a visitation panel restore peace there.
She would hold the post until the outcome of the Special Visitation Panel set up by the President, Muhammadu Buhari.
Currently, chairman of the National Association of Colleges of Medicine in Nigeria, Ogunsola was the provost of the College of Medicine, University of Lagos.
Her research areas have been centered on the regulation and management of viral diseases, particularly HIV.
She is also the principal investigator at AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) at the University of Lagos and has been the chairman of the Infection Control Committee of Lagos University Teaching Hospital.
Her election has restored peace to the first generation University which was recently plunged into crisis following the leadership tussle between Dr Wale Babalakin led Council and Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe. Both of them had been asked to recuse themselves from official duties, pending the outcome of the panel.
The Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, will on August 26, inaugurate the panel.
Members of the panel include Professor Tukur Sa’ad (Chairman), Barrister Victor Onuoha, Professor Ikenna Onyido, Professor Ekanem Braide, Professor Adamu K. Usman, Chief Jimoh Bankole and Barrister Grace Ekanem (Secretary).
Meanwhile, the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) has kicked against the re-composition of the Special Visitation Panel to look into the purported removal of Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos (UNILAG).
SSANU President, Mr Samson Ugwoke, made the call in a letter addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari, Minister of Education and the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission on Monday in Abuja.
According to Ugwoke: “While SSANU appreciates the prompt intervention of the visitor in the ongoing crisis and the sincere efforts in nipping the crisis in the bud, the directives of the visitor as contained in the Press Release have a further tendency to cause more crisis as issues bordering on due process and fair hearing have been trampled upon arising from the visitor’s directives under reference,” he said.
Ugwoke said that there was need to review the composition and members of the Special Visitation Panel as the crisis in the University of Lagos has ASUU members as a major participants in the Panel, adding that indeed, ASUU is the complainant in this matter.
“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, he said, adding,
“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,” he said.
SSANU president also 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.
“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.
Ugwoke, while speaking on the directive to University Senate to convene to elect an Acting Vice Chancellor, noted that ‘the visitor to the University of Lagos Senate should hold a Special meeting to elect an Acting Vice-Chancellor’ conflicts with Paragraph 3(iii) of the same visitor’s directive.
“SSANU has reason to fear if the visitor had not been compromised by some forces within the University system whose entrenched interests are already manifesting in the conflicting directives.
“From the above conflicting directives, it is only obvious that the visitation panel would only be working to the answer,” he concluded.
