UniAbuja VC Appointment: Crisis Looms As Selection Board Members Walk Out Of Meeting Amid Moves To Impose ‘Unqualified’ Acting VC Maikudi
The University Senate has scheduled a meeting for today, Tuesday, to replace Senate members who allegedly refused to endorse a manipulated selection joint board.
A crisis is brewing at the University of Abuja in Nigeria over plans to appoint Prof. Aisha Maikudi as the substantive Vice-Chancellor, SaharaReporters has learned.
The University Senate has scheduled a meeting for today, Tuesday, to replace Senate members who allegedly refused to endorse a manipulated selection joint board.
According to sources who spoke to SaharaReporters on Tuesday morning, the move is seen as a desperate attempt to impose the Acting VC Prof. Maikudi as the VC, taking advantage of the holiday season when many Senate members are away.
According to the sources, the Governing Council is divided, with some members feeling that Prof. Maikudi lacks the necessary experience, having only about two years of professional experience under her belt.
Prof. Maikudi, however, has an impressive academic background, having obtained her LLB from the University of Reading and LLM from the London School of Economics & Political Science. She joined the University of Abuja in 2008 and rose through the ranks to become a professor in 2022.
SaharaReporters also learned that Tuesday’s meeting earlier scheduled for 9 a.m. was later shifted to 11:30 a.m.
‘Moves To Impose Acting VC’
One of the sources said: “There is a scheduled crisis in the University. A Senate meeting was earlier scheduled for 9 a.m. today to replace Senate members who refused to endorse the manipulated selection committee desperate to impose the acting Vice Chancellor Aisha Maikudi on everyone.
“The crisis-ridden Governing Council feels she is not qualified to run having only two years of professorial experience.
“The desperate people want to take advantage of holidays when most Senate members have travelled to hold a kangaroo session on Christmas Eve to replace internal members of Senate of the of the Governing Council of UNIABUJA to select Aisha Maikudi.”
“The desperados want to impose her at all cost to continue with a very corrupt administration in UNIABUJA,” the source added.
The 10th Governing Council of the University of Abuja led by Air Vice-Marshal Saddiq Ismaila Kaita (Rtd) on July 5, 2024 approved the appointment of Maikudi as acting VC of the University.
The approval was announced after the inaugural meeting of the Council on July 5.
However, a member of the Senate of the University, who spoke to SaharaReporters on condition of anonymity, revealed that the Chairman of the Governing Council, Kaita, who is from Katsina State as the acting VC is nursing a sinister motive to impose her without due process as stipulated by the law.
The source said, “What is happening is that the university is regulated by law and every component part has its function. We have a process of appointing a Vice Chancellor and the process of appointing a Vice Chancellor lies within the council and the selection board.
“The selection board is composed of two elected members from the Senate and two members from Council and the chairman of the Council will be the chairman of the selection board.
“The function of the selection board is to do the selection in terms of looking at their curriculum vitae, looking at capacity and then for a suitable qualified candidate, get a reasonable number and invite them for interview. Before the interview, the applicants’ names will be sent to State Security Services (SSS) otherwise known as the Department of State Services (DSS) and then wait for the SSS to do their work reasonably and send back the list of those who are cleared.
“When they’re cleared, the selection board will now call them for interview, and thereafter we will send the first three candidates to the Council for the Council to announce who they want to announce as the Vice Chancellor. But in our own case, we have been elected since October 9, two of us from the Senate.
“The chairman did not call any meeting, only to call a meeting yesterday, Monday, December 23 and before calling the meeting, the Council went ahead to mutilate the list of 87 candidates and bring out 40 names and wanted us to finish the matter at one sitting.
“After sitting, send it to the SSS the following day, call for interview for two days without knowing what number of people they want to call for interview and they said, ‘Look, the Council has usurped our power of the selection board, allow us to do our work, why are you rushing this during the Yuletide to do this thing in five days if you don’t have intention of anointing a candidate?’
“And we are aware of the clandestine move of the chairman and some members of the ministry of education, they have co-opted themselves to do this, jettison the process and since they disallow us by law to do our job, we had no option but to walk out because that is the most civilized manner that we can behave.
“Now when some of the members walked out, the acting Vice Chancellor now called for a Senate meeting today (Tuesday) so that the Senate can remove us. Their representatives and all the Senate members have been there. They shifted the meeting from 9 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and we are here and the Senate members said even if the meeting will hold at midnight, they will stay for it.”
The Senate member further continued, “I want to assure you that we will still be here and nobody is going for Christmas until when they finish doing what they want to do.
“Ordinarily if the chairman is not complicit, he knows the process. According to the law, nothing allows you appoint the university Vice Chancellor in 10 days based on the process but the chairman is bent of achieving that before the months ends.
“We don’t know what is behind that but we do not have any candidate. We have our university and we want this university to be great and we do not care who becomes the substantive VC but they should allow the process bring out someone who is qualified, who will lead this university to the next level.
“So there’s no crisis; maybe it is the chairman, acting VC and some members of the ministry that are causing this crisis. And they are brandishing the name of the minister but we know the minister is a responsible man.
“He has done it in Awka, Anambra State; a minister who sacked the Council in Awka cannot come here and make another Council to behave the way the Council in Awka behaved. That is why they are intelligent by half.”
‘Manipulation Of List’
A source close the University Governing Council members confirmed the brewing crisis to SaharaReporters on telephone, blaming it on the Chairman of the Council whom they accused of violating all the due processes in an ambitious effort to make Maikudi the substantive VC.
The source described the University of Abuja as “stinking” with reckless disregard for the rule of law.
“It is true that the Council was divided. It was a stormy meeting of Council on Monday. The people have been compromised, they are rooting for the current acting vice-chancellor who has spent only about three years as a professor and there are professors of 15, 16, 20 and 25 years in that university and elsewhere.
“Eight-seven people applied for this position worldwide and 22 are from the University of Abuja. The Council shortlisted 25. Twenty-nine candidates were originally shortlisted, but yesterday (Monday) the Council chairman called the chairman of the selection board, manipulated the list and then increased the number to 40 to accommodate the acting VC who they are sponsoring.
“What they are trying to do is to eliminate anybody who is a potential candidate better than her because she has only three years of professorial experience. So the Council told them, ‘Okay, you have two advertisements for the position of the VC – one said you must have been a professor for five years. The woman is three years of professorial experience so automatically she is disqualified and now the chairman imposed her on the Council, and lied that he received a letter from the ministry of education, saying that they must conclude this assignment on or before December 31, 2024.
“There are seven days left and the chairman has come out with what he called a timeline, asking people to come for interview on Saturday and Sunday during this festive period.”
The source explained that efforts to get the Council chairman to provide any explanation for the rush were rebuffed.
“The Council asked him why and he didn’t provide any explanation to them. They also asked him for copies of the letter from the education ministry but he failed to produce it. He didn’t tell the Council members who signed the letter, if it was the minister or not.
“So they are just dropping the name of the minister. The minister is an organised person, he cannot interfere with the work of the Council. There are five members on the Council appointed by the federal government, three of them are from the northern region and two are from the South – one is from the South West and the other is from the South East.
“In terms of the manipulation, the chairman put all the three northerners in the selection board and dropped the two who are from the South. He ignored the federal character. This is not the first time they would do that.
“The joint board of Senate and Council are supposed to do the shortlisting and arrange the one they have shortlisted and send them to the DSS for clearance before the interview. And what the chairman did yesterday was to rush those people to come and when they came, there the two professors who represented the Senate said what he did was wrong. All the shortlisting should be done by this board not the committee of the Council.
“They were arguing and there was a man from the ministry of education who has been compromised. So at the end of the day, the two professors representing the Senate walked out of that meeting and they wrote that they walked out because of the reckless disregard for due process and rule of law.”
SaharaReporters learnt that the two dons who walked are Prof K. M. Waziri and Prof. Rosemary Udeazo.
“The chairman of the Council is from Katsina, the acting Vice Chancellor is from Katsina and the immediate past Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council is from Katsina and he is the father of the current acting VC,” the source added.
“So they want to manipulate the whole thing and rush it so that they are done by December 31. They don’t want to respect religion; they want to conduct interviews on Saturday and Sunday. So the place stinks and they are threatening people’s lives there.”
When contacted, Prof. Waziri confirmed that he and Prof. Udeazo – who were elected by the Senate – walked out when the council chairman denied them the right to perform their functions as prescribed by law.
