One is not proud to recall the prediction made about the current, illegally imposed acting Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abuja nursing the ambition and mooting plans to transmute into the next substantive Vice-Chancellor of what most preceptive observers now refer to as the ‘conquered university’. One is only saddened by the fact that under the Tinubu Administration and the weight of the erratic approach of the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, the University of Abuja, nay, the Nigerian University system, is witnessing a downward slide in governance and management. The Minister’s sordid predilection for undue interference now matches the current chaotic and irrational policy flip-flops, especially in the tertiary education sector. However, the contemporary self-governing status of the universities has rendered it politically unwise and almost unworkable for their micro-management by external bodies. This seems to be lost on Dr. Alausa.
Not long ago, at Admiralty University in Delta State, the Minister played a short-lived dirty game,rejecting and accepting the outcome of a selection process for a new Vice-Chancellor within forty-eight hours. And only last week, the Minister was again in the news for allegedly interfering in the selection process for appointing a new substantive Vice-Chancellor at the Federal University of Dutsin-Ma in Katsina. This has sadly been his stock-in-trade since becoming the head of the Education portfolio in the current administration. Apart from undermining the hard-earned autonomy of the universities, the unbecoming government interference through the Minister is now encouraging disgruntled contestants for the position of Vice-Chancellor in the system to bypass the Governing Councils through lobbying,petitions, and all manner of shenanigans. Indeed, the usurpation of the power of the Governing Councils can only render bad governance and management mayhem in the institutions. It is high time that Dr. Alausa is advised that it is impossible to successfully manage the universities through an escalation of chaos and instability.
In the particular case of the University of Abuja, which has remained the embodiment of monumental blunder of the Tinubu Administration, Dr. Alausa facilitated the unlawful deposition of the legitimate governing authorities of the institution and their replacement by what is now popularly described as a one-man Governing Council and an acting Vice-Chancellor from the University of Jos. This abject disregard of the existing laws and due process has laid the foundation for the equivalent of administrative gangsterism at the University of Abuja.
True to her unlawful status, Professor Patricia Manko Lar, the imposed sole administrator, has been managing the University without recourse to its existing rules, traditions, history, and established administrative practices. Witness, for instance, how the University of Abuja is the only one today with a strange and unknown core of senior special assistants to the Vice-Chancellor, who have been appointed and imposed to take over the duties and responsibilities of statutorily recognised Deputy Vice-Chancellors.Again, only recently, some high-profile disciplinary cases involving alleged falsification of records and conveyance of unauthorised decisions were abruptly terminated by the interim sole administration without reason or justification. This is notwithstanding that the cases are before the Governing Council for consideration.
Additionally, Professor Lar recently announced the promotion of some academic staff to the professorial cadre without the imprimatur of the Governing Council and its related Appointments and Promotions Committee (A&PC). The illegal promotions to the ranks of full professor and associate professor were reported to have been approved by the Pro-Chancellor, even when he lacks the power to do so in the queer capacity of a one-man Governing Council. However, it has emerged that Senator Lanre Tejuoso, with his wealth of experience and track record of previous stellar performance as Pro-Chancellor at the Universities of Lagos and Makurdi, could not have approved such illegal promotions. The announcement of the promotions was just a political gimmick hatched by Professor Lar and some of her close, desperate allies for selfish political gains, in the hope that the incoming Governing Council would be malleable enough to accept as a fait accompli. It is worth noting that among the beneficiaries of the futile exercise is a controversial returnee to the University who has been primed to play a facilitating role in Professor Lar’s regime transmutation agenda.
It would seem now that most of the crude and illegal actions of the sole administrator imposed by the Government from the University of Jos are an integral part of the script laying the grounds for her emergence as the next substantive Vice-Chancellor of the institution. In an earlier publication in https://dailytrust.com of 23 March 2025 entitled “Sole administration and the impending transition mayhem at University of Abuja”, I drew attention to Professor Lar’s contemplation of this game plan and the possibility of it plunging the University of Abuja into a cocktail of unprecedented transition mayhem. Well, the game has just commenced.
For starters, Professor Lar has orchestrated and unleashed a propaganda blitz to whitewash her inglorious interloping reign at the University, while at the same time indiscriminately demonising thepast legitimate and accomplished Vice-Chancellors. The first salvo of accusations recently fired against the past legitimate administrations was by a trio of questionable characters whose motivation could aswell be self-preservation as it is to ingratiate a sole administration for pecuniary gain. It is curious that a team bereft of integrity, comprising Dr. Godwin Okaneme, Hilary Ukpabi, and one Abdulrasheed Oseni, could suddenly be commissioned to do the impossible task of laundering the image of the unwelcome sole administration.
Unsurprisingly, in their desperation to execute the futile hatchet job, it did not occur to them that the joke of their unfounded allegation of illegal recruitment of staff by past administrations is on Professor Patricia Lar herself because her current appointment at the University of Abuja embodies, more than any other, illegality in all material particular. Again, they could not but hide and shy away from the contradicting inconvenient fact that Professor Lar has so far approved no less than forty (40) irregular appointments to the staffing of the University, and still counting. And imagine such a huge number of illegal recruitments while falsely claiming that the woman did not inherit enormous funds to run the University. Who, then, is fooling whom?
By the way, these mercenary fellows are known in and around the University of Abuja to be haunted by several outstanding disciplinary cases involving, among others, student extortion, illegal handout sales, and admission and accommodation racketeering. As hinted earlier, striving for survival in the system may be on the cards for Okaneme and his fellow travellers in this newfound endeavour. They may have taken a cue from the earlier unilateral termination of other existing disciplinary cases by theProfessor Lar-led sole administration.
So, it did not surprise anyone when they advanced the hackneyed refrain that the advent of the obnoxious sole administration at the University of Abuja was a divine intervention. This is in the hope that the current leadership may save them from the delayed, but certain ignominy arising from their past infractions against the institution. However, much as one is not surprised by their self-serving praise forthe sole administrator and advocacy for extension of her tenure, we welcome their call for a visitation panel to look into the affairs of the University. Since visitation to universities is normally regime-bound, it is necessary and inevitable that President Tinubu should set up a special visitation panel to cover the period of the sole administration led by Professor Manko Lar from 10th February to date. The government and the University of Abuja community must look into the affairs, especially to establish the huge financial resources inherited by Professor Lar on assumption of office, and what has become of them to date. This will surely go a long way in revealing the financial resources Professor Lar inherited and what she is bequeathing for the incoming administration.
Meanwhile, it is further curious why the so-called G44 members have kept mute over the tenure extension intrigues of Professor Lar, while rogue elements have taken the centre stage. Are we witnessing the end of the contrived honeymoon involving the imposed helmswoman from the University of Jos and her hitherto unabashed allies and associates? Or have they reached the predictable point of intractable conflict of interest? Does Professor Lar’s intriguing power play signal the ‘death and burial’ of the phantom Project Internal Candidate (PIC) of her increasingly bewildered and beleaguered comrades? Interesting times lie ahead, no doubt. For the good students of history, if there is any enduring lesson to learn and imbibe from the dynamism of human society, it is that one may be the initiator or serve as a trigger of a particular phenomenon, but how it develops, progresses or retrogresses up to the finishing point, is often not determined by the initiator. This is more so if such a phenomenon is not well-intentioned or founded on sound ideals.
Thus, the self-adulation and initial celebration over the advent of the sole administration by those who bitterly opposed the appointment of Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi as the 7th substantive Vice-Chancellor of the University may have been premature. The elements that constitute the self-styled G44 members out of the over 300-member Senate of the University, and who, out of envy and unbridled hatred,celebrated Professor Maikudi’s unlawful ouster, have now lost the plot on all counts. First, their anointed man and a perpetual aspirant for the position of acting Vice-Chancellor in the Faculty of Education, lost out to a stranger from the University of Jos, contrary to the extant laws and due process. It was a poetic justice that their gangster-like agitation for illegality only resulted in greater illegality committed by the government that politically put them to the sword. Consequently, they are nowhere close to the position now compared to when they threw the kitchen sink at the system at the beginning of the year, which some power brokers in the Tinubu Administration exploited to unhorse Professor Maikudi.
Secondly, since assumption of office, the sole administrator has managed the gung-ho, lawless lot adroitly to the extent that while they are allowed to pursue personal vendettas against their perceived ‘political enemies’ in the system, she continues to consolidate her position in anticipation of the upcoming transition to a new leadership. Her methodology in this regard is simple: she would accept all the proposals from the group for administrative changes, staff redeployment, and other changes, but in implementation, reject their list and appoint her candidates instead. That is how Professor Lar has not conceded even a single position out of the over forty (40) recommendations the group forwarded to her, despite agreeing to remove all the officers recommended to her by the group in the first place. Accordingly, they are now a spent force without a solid political footing in the university. At the same time, their nuisance value has drastically plummeted, as they had to recently scuttle an ASUU executive committee election for fear of electoral disgrace to their candidates. To compound matters for them, it is known that the Pro-Chancellor has marked them and vowed not to allow the emergence of any among the G44 members as the next substantive Vice-Chancellor so long as he presides at the Governing Council. This is said to be on account of their unruly and unreliable disposition.
Thirdly, by pursuing her tenure extension and substantive appointment agenda, Professor Lar is poised to be the nemesis of the same forces that welcomed the imposed sole administration under the hate-driven and self-deceptive cover of ‘divine intervention’. No one genuinely concerned with the current trajectory of the University will show any sympathy to these sore losers and unrepentant opportunists who are bound to square up to the tenure extension seeking sole administrator. A few of the ambitious elements among the lot have heavily invested in the project, not to give it up for Professor Lar to contemplate picking it on a platter of gold. Itis envisaged to be a fight to finish to clinch the substantive position of the Vice-Chancellor anytime soon.
However, the University of Abuja does not need to continue suffering from the tyranny of the government’s unlawful actions that have put the institution in a very precarious position. Since there is no place in law, precedence, global governance ethos, or best practices for the current leadership contraption existing at the University, the simple and most logical thing to do is to reverse it and restore the legitimate governing bodies of the institution.The operatives of the government of the day cannot continue claiming to be democrats while remaining averse to the rule of law and due process. Universities, as ‘ivory towers’, are law-governed entities that should not be reduced to recipients of dictatorial handouts from those engaged to superintend their unencumbered operations based on prescribed processes, procedures, and practices. It is up to President Tinubu to arrest the governance and management drift at the University of Abuja by reinstating Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi and the unlawfully disbanded Governing Council. There isno two ways about it.
Dr Kwairanga, writes from the Sultan Maccido Institute for Peace & Legislative Studies, University of Abuja
