The Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Ogun State is in the news again.
For the wrong reason.
A few days after students were sent home due to a bloody protest, members of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) of the institution, on Wednesday, technically shut down the school.
The residential lodge of the institution’s Vice Chancellor, Prof Olusola Oyewole, and the Senate Building were locked.
They will only be reopened if the VC resigns, the workers vowed.
If he doesn’t resign, President Muhammadu Buhari, through the Education Minister, Malam Adamu Adamu, should sack him.
The Governing Council should also be dissolved.
The Governing Council is headed by former Works Minister, Senator Adeseye Ogunlewe.
The members tabled their grievances after an emergency congress held at the university campus.
Their demand was a fallout of the investigation of the Vice Chancellor and the institution’s Bursar, Moses Ilesanmi, by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) over allegations of corruption and betrayal of public trust.
A group, ‘Concerned Stakeholders of FUNAAB,’ had detailed several cases of sleaze and funds mismanagement in the university, prompting the anti-graft agency to quiz Oyewole and Ilesanmi last week.
As a result, the VC suspended three members of SSANU, including Comrade Salaam Sobur (National Publicity Secretary), Comrade Emmanuel Bankole (National Deputy President) and Comrade Lasun Somoye (former Public Relations Officer of FUNAAB), for alleged “meddlesomeness and confirmatory evidence in the act prejudicial to the smooth running and governance of the university.”
On Wednesday, the SSANU branch of FUNAAB under the chairmanship of Comrade Rotimi Fasunwon called the emergency congress to take a position on the suspended members.
The union wondered why Oyewole suspended the three staff when he himself was undergoing criminal investigation.
SSANU maintained that the VC erred in suspending the trio, especially when they were neither queried nor made to sit before any disciplinary committee constituted by the university.
The union claimed that the VC contravened section 5.10.1 (Interdiction) of the FUNAAB’s Senior Staff Rules and Regulations.
Fasunwon declared that the union would mobilise its members to shut down the university from Thursday.
At the congress, one of the union members, Comrade Jiboku Ayodeji, moved the motion for the suspension of the VC and dissolution of the Governing Council.
Ayodeji argued that it was abnormal for a university Vice Chancellor to take such a unilateral decision when still under criminal investigation.
