The Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, CNPP, has asked the Federal Government to immediately reinstate the Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria, Prof. Vincent Tenebe and three others whose tenure were yet to expire, but were included among the 13 Vice Chancellors whose sack became public knowledge yesterday.
The CNPP, in a statement issued on Sunday by its Secretary-General, Willy Ezugwu, threatened to mobilize a protest with other civil society organisations on Wednesday to call for the resignation of the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, over “erroneous” inclusion of the name of the Vice Chancellor of NOUN, in the sack notice, when his tenure was yet to elapse.
While stressing that the action of the Federal Government contravened laid down rules, “and could lead to industrial unrest in the education sector,” Ezugwu observed that the Governing Council empowered by law to recommend the sack of the NOUN VC has not recommended any of such action.
The CNPP advised President Muhammadu Buhari to call Adamu Adamu to order, else, “the action of the minister will only attract more chaos in our universities.”
Adamu had in a terse statement, simply disclosed that President Buhari, has approved the appointment of new Vice Chancellors for the universities.
But the CNPP described the actions of the minister as reckless, while also flaying “the deliberate decision of the minister to replaced the VCs with his northern kinsmen.”
The group said the action of the minister contravened the university miscellaneous Act No.25, 1996 and further amended in 2003 and 2012 respectively and other agreements as contained in the 2009 FGN staff union agreement.
Ezugwu noted that four out of the 12 newly appointed vice chancellors are from Kano University, an action he said, was a clear violation of the federal character principle
He consequently demanded human rights activists and those in the academia to rise up and speak up against the sack.
According to him, “We received the news of the sack of the Vice Chancellor of NOUN and 12 others with shock.
“It is obvious that the Minister of Education is yet to abreast himself with the laws governing university system in Nigeria.
“We like to say the sack was done in bad taste and urge the minister to immediately reverse such sack.”
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