The recent intervention by one Professor Toba Alabi on the leadership crisis that has afflicted the University of Abuja over the past one year has not only spectacularly failed to come to grips with the imposed situation at the beleaguered institution, but it has also exposed an intellectual grappling with shallow generalised narratives, as opposed to the concrete, even if, inconvenient facts of the matter. Preferring to play to the gallery rather than situate the crisis at its well-known root, Professor Alabi, throughout his evasive intervention, grotesquely disregarded the subversion of the university’s governing laws and autonomy, as well as the government’s role in orchestrating the ongoing leadership conundrum.
The agitations and cacophony of noise by those who lost out in the race that produced Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi as the 7th substantive Vice-Chancellor did not, on all counts, warrant the unilateral actions taken by the government against the legitimate and properly constituted governing authorities of the University in February last year. However, in his piece entitled “Today in History. The Sack of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abuja and University Administration in Nigeria”, Professor Alabi opted to generalise the issues in terms of systemic governance crisis while conspicuously disregarding the atrocious specificity of the university’s current situation engendered by impunity and executive overreach of the government, its agencies, and actors.
Incontestably, there is nothing general or common about a 21st-century university in Nigeria, or anywhere in the world, being saddled with four vice-chancellors and one uncommon ‘consultant vice-chancellor’ within one year, and still grappling with chronic leadership instability. It was unprecedented, avoidable, and uncalled for. Hence, the pontification by Professor Alabi and his ilk will only obfuscate the happenings at the University of Abuja and further obstruct a proper rule-based resolution of the leadership conundrum. This should not be accepted by all conscientious stakeholders, especially the hard and worst-hit members of the University of Abuja community. According to Sheikh Uthman Ibn Fodio, the 19th-century Sokoto Islamic jihadist, conscience is an open wound; only truth will heal.
Deployment of False Narrative of Faulty Selection Process
Alabi introduced his write-up and attempted to explain the unlawful removal of Professor Aisha Maikudi and the premature dissolution of the 10th University of Abuja Governing Council, by making outlandish claims such as “the official explanation for the decision points to irregularities in the selection process that led to her appointment…”. This is sheer fabrication by Alabi because no such explanation has emanated from the government to date. The official statements announcing these drastic measures, issued by both the Presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, and the Permanent Secretary of theFederal Ministry of Education, have been in the public domain and accessible. In addition, the government has been unable to serve Professor Maikudi with a disengagement letter that could have explained her removal from office. Hence, as it stands today, contrary to Alabi’s postulation, official reason(s) or explanation for the unilateral actions rooted in the law and due process do not exist.
Even those who raised unfounded allegations and escalated their agitations beyond the confines of the university following Professor Maikudi’s appointment have been exposed and compelled to reverse themselves by the force of law and the imperative of opportunism. The major allegations by the internal antagonists against Maikudi’s appointment were that she did not meet the so-called ten-year professorial requirement and that the Council had usurped the power of the Joint Council and Senate Selection Board in selecting and shortlisting eligible candidates for interview. However, it is established that the 10-year professorial requirement is not a prescription of any governing law of the system, and several universities have continued to appoint their vice-chancellors without adherence to it. In any case this was not part of the advertised requirements by the Governing Council for the position. In furtherance of this trend, and as this piece is being written, the news just broke of the appointment of an American-minted ‘Associate Professor’ as the new substantive vice-chancellor of the Federal University, Wukari, in Taraba state. An Associate Professor in the USA corresponds to a Lecturer 1 in Nigeria, who should be down in the pecking order and not eligible to contest for the office!
Furthermore, the principal dramatis personae involved in antagonising the 10th Council’s shortlisting of candidates, particularly Professor K. M. Waziri of the Faculty of Law and representative of Senate on the Selection Board, acquiesced and participated in the controversial appointment of the current eligibility-challenged vice-chancellor, Professor Hakeem Fawehinmi, long after the 11th Council had similarly shortlisted interview candidates with neither the constitution nor participation of the Joint Council and Senate Selection Board. There was no whimper against the process this time around, underscoring that their opposition to Maikudi’s appointment was merely contrived to truncate it and subsequently appropriate the process anew.
The opportunism in the dethronement of Professor Maikudi was clear. The turn of events at the University of Abuja has been proving so. More of those who served in the opposition trenches against Maikudi, especially Waziri and his fellow travellers,are being rewarded accordingly. Professor Waziri is now the brand-new Dean of the Postgraduate School, and his fellow Senate Representative on the last Selection Board, Professor Gboyega Kolawole of the Department of English and Literary Studies, is appointed as the new Chairman of the University’s Procurement Planning Committee. The new Deputy Vice-Chancellors, Academic and Administration, Professors Rosemary Udeozor and Muhammad Ndagi, respectively, also belong in the same camp. Other than this singular reason, with one being a well-known truant and the other a legendary mischief-and-conflict merchant whose exploits also currently manifest in the ongoing crisis ravaging a major religious national agency, they are not better than the so-called senior special assistants they have replaced in the hitherto opaque governance and administrative architecture of the institution.
Rationalising the Institutional Instability
Another inept generalisation by Alabi on the current University of Abuja situation reads, in extenso, thus:
“The instability is not an isolated incident
but rather part of a long-standing trend
at the university, marked by frequent leadership
changes and disruption of academic activities.
Over the years, the University of Abuja has
experienced a high turnover of Vice-Chancellors,
which has often hindered the implementation of
long-term strategic plans. This administrative
instability leads to a lack of continuity, with
each new leadership team often starting from
scratch, unable to build on the progress of their
predecessors.”
Anyone familiar with the history and developmental trajectory of the University of Abuja would be amazed by Alabi’s shallow attempt to equate the events from February 2025 to date with its overall leadership trajectory. Since its inception in 1988 to January 2025, the institution was administered by six substantive vice-chancellors and three acting vice-chancellors who midwifed leadership transitions at various intervals. All the substantive vice-chancellors served their tenures within the limits allowed by law, including the pioneer vice-chancellor, Professor Isa B. Mohammed, who enjoyed two terms permitted by law under the military dispensation.
Accordingly, contrary to Alabi’s assertions, there was no evidence of “frequent leadership changes” warranting “a high turnover of vice-chancellors” in 33 of the university’s 34 years of existence. The rupture in the university’s tenure-bound leadership transition occurred only in the last year, following the precipitous, unilateral interference by the Tinubu administration in the institution’s governance and affairs. This development has not only engendered the ongoing deepening crisis, but it has also culminated in the unprecedented appointment of four vice-chancellors for the university in just one year.
After failing to underline undue external interference,it is also curious that Alabi would further generalise the resultant inglorious situation by claiming that “the University of Abuja reflects the many crises that plague Nigerian universities”. There is no Nigerian university that has ever been reduced to a ‘conquered entity’, especially in this autonomy-driven era, as is the University of Abuja presently under a supposedly civil-democratic regime. Instructively, even in theactions taken against various universities, it is evident that the Tinubu regime has lost the plot and has willy-nilly pushed the University of Abuja to its lowest ebb, with increasingly unenviable peculiarities.
Disregarding the Specificities
It is in the foregoing context that Alabi’s attempt to generalise and normalise the ongoing crisis at the University of Abuja smacks of intellectual dishonesty. Attempting to underscore and situate the internal contestation against Professor Maikudi within the usual prevailing primordial undercurrentalso falls flat because the leading protagonist, who deployed enormous financial resources and mobilised the so-called G44 members of the University Senate after losing the position, Professor Sani Mashi, hails from the same Katsina state as Maikudi. Which, contrary to Alabi’s contention, renders primordial sentiments implausible as a causative factor, whether in Maikudi’s appointment or the internal agitations to thwart it.
Of course, the primordial sentiments may have only played a part in both her eventual removal from the office and the refusal to reinstate her to date. Recall that on 6th February 2025, the Federal Government announced the removal of vice-chancellors and dissolution of Governing Councils of some universities, including the University of Abuja. The others affected by the unprecedented leadership changes are the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, the University of Health Sciences, Oturkpo; the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; the Federal University of Lokoja, and the Alvan Ikoku Federal University of Education, Owerri.
However, the University of Abuja has been the hardest hit by the government’s drastic unilateral actions. It is the only university that the entire Governing Council (including the internal members appointed by the University Senate and Congregation) was dissolved, and it has also suffered the indignity of having two successive imposed acting vice-chancellors preside over its affairs. Contrary to existing laws, Professor Patricia MankoLar from the University of Jos and Professor Mathew Adamu from the Joseph Sarwuan University of Agriculture, Makurdi, were illegally appointed by the government as successive acting vice-chancellors forsix and three months, respectively.
For a greater part of Professor Lar’s term in office, the new Pro-Chancellor, Senator Lanre Tejuoso had operated as a ‘one-man’ Governing Council of the University during which the laid-down governance and management structure and ethos were disrupted and bastardised with iniquities, including the creation and appointment of strange ‘senior special assistants’to the vice-chancellor in place of the statutory recognised deputy vice-ch
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