Are we going to be buried forever under the burden and the yoke of servitude in Lagos State? The answer of course is no.
This is why all conscionable indigenes of Lagos State should outrightly reject the attempt to impose Professor Ibiyemi Bello as the next Vice Chancellor of Lagos State University over better qualified indigenes of our state.
Professor Ibiyemi Bello is the wife of Tunji Bello who had served in various positions in Lagos State continuously for more than twenty years like a worn out recycled old machine, jumping from one office to the other as if they are playing Russian roulette with our lives.
Tunji Bello was commissioner at three different times. And he was also a Secretary to the State Government. Even as I write, he is the present Commissioner for Environment. Bello of course is from Kogi State.
Where else in this nation can a non-indigene dominate the public service for this long only because he is close to the tools of power?
And to rub salt upon injury, his wife who is from Ondo State is being schemed to occupy the position of Vice Chancellor of LASU when there are better qualified Lagosian professors who have been shortlisted for the position. This is the third time Mrs Bello will be contesting for the position in ten years in an undisguised, very untidy fixation.
Other well qualified contenders are Professor Olumuyiwa Odusanya, Professor Senapon Bakre, Professor Kabir Akinyemi and Professor Muyiwa Awofolu.
Why is Professor Bello being pushed to occupy the Vice Chancellor’s office as if it is some hereditary position in a callous contempt for the indigenes of our state?
Surely, this is not the vision of Alhaji Lateef Jakande who built the institution more than thirty-five years ago to give the indigenes a quality education and at once give the indigenous professionals a place in the sun. This is no longer the case.
Our people are being shoved aside amid a crude and dangerous insensitivity in a new recolonisation of Lagos.
They are pushing us to the wall. They are treating us with contempt. As a stakeholder and as a committed indigene, I am seriously advising the authorities to move swiftly away from this callous, ill-conceived decision whose untoward implication no one can fathom.
I remember clearly that when former Professor Fatiu Akesode contested for the Vice Chancellorship of Ogun State University several years ago, he was rejected and told to go back home to Lagos State.
And now what is
naturally our own is being taken away one after the other by partisan alien hands. This is totally unacceptable. It is wrong. It is unjust.
While I will continue to encourage merit, fairness in the appointments to public office, I will never stop in the defence and in the protection of the inalienable rights of well qualified native Lagosians whose collective destinies are now being brazenly eroded and trampled upon on their own soil. This is one contempt and insult too many.
*Major General Tajudeen Olanrewaju (rtd) is former Minister of Communication.
