ASUU demands probe of LASU VC professorship

THE South-West zone of the Academic Staff Union of Universities has demanded the probe of the incumbent vice chancellor of the Lagos State University, Ojo, Professor Olarenwaju Fagbohun, over his “undue promotion” to the professorship cadre.

South-West ASUU, which comprises Lagos, Ibadan, Akure and Benin zones, said the probe is what the governing council of LASU should be concerned about and not the constitution of a disciplinary committee to probe leaders of the union for exposing the backdated promotion.

ASUU leadership from the region, who said they were acting on the directive from the national body, stormed LASU campus last Thursday and staged a peaceful protest the following day to the Lagos State governor’s office over the matter.

They included Professor Sowande Olusiji (Lagos zone), Dr Alex Odiyi (Akure zone), Dr Ade Adejumo (Ibadan Zone) and Professor Fred Esumeh (Benin zone).

The union is alleging that the university management is planning to use the matter to unjustly terminate the appointment of Dr Tony Dansu, Dr Adeolu Oyekan and Dr Oluwafemi Aboderin-Shonibare –secretary, assistant secretary and treasurer of ASUU at LASU respectively – on the premise that they were the whistle blowers as regards the backdated promotion.

Speaking on behalf of others, the Lagos zone coordinator, Professor Sowande Olusiji from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, asked the council to focus on investigating whether the allegation is true or not and then take decision on the outcome either in favour of the whistle blowers or the person accused.

He said it was unheard of in a sane society to punish someone on the basis of exposing a wrongdoing of another person or institution.

“ASUU can never be caged. We have the rights to association and expression of opinions. So, castigating our members for being in possession of documents of any worker in our universities, especially in this era of Freedom of Information Law, should not arise at all,” he said.

Professor Olusiji said it was no longer news to ASUU that the university sometime ago unjustly dismissed members of the union in the branch, and that the union would not allow a recurrence of such incident this time around.

He said LASU management had begun another systematic process to also dismiss the ASUU secretary, assistant secretary and treasurer of the branch over trumped up charge of having collected a classified document and releasing same to the public domain.

He referred to a letter dated June 1, 2018, signed by Dansu and Oyekan, in which ASUU-LASU prayed the council to investigate whether or not the university’s former registrar, Mr Akinwunmi Lewis, had done wrong in backdating Fagbohun’s promotion approved on May 7, 2014 to October 1, 2008 without which he (Fagbohun) could have been qualified to run for the office of vice chancellor.

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Interestingly, the union leaders attached documents that listed the council members that approved the promotion of Fagbohun and nine others on May 7, 2014, as well as the letter of promotion that the former registrar wrote to him (Fagbohun) on August 24, 2014 backdating his promotion to October 1, 2008.

In the letter, a copy of which is with Tribune Education, they asked why the registrar made the decision without evidence of the council’s approval of Professor Fagbohun who was appointed as vice chancellor in 2015.

At the governor’s office during their protest on Friday, the lecturers re-emphasised all their claims, and urged the governor to intervene in order to forestall the brewing crisis from degenerating into a full-blown one.

But reacting to the promotion allegation, the university management said ASUU’s claims, though baseless, were already being investigated by the governing council and the union should therefore wait for the outcome and not pre-empt it.

The university’s spokesman, Mr Ademola Adekoya, who reacted on behalf of the university, told Tribune Education that aside the investigation of the backdated professorship, the university was also interested in probing the source of the documents containing the vice chancellor backdated promotion to professor.

According to him, the document that ASUU quoted to have contained the alleged backdated promotion is a classified one, and should not have been in the public domain.

“Where did they get the confidential document from? Because any attempt to check someone else file without being authorised to do so is illegal in the conditions of service, which is known to every staff of the university. The action is a gross misconduct that attracts sanction. That is why the illegality must be corrected first,” he explained.

Adekoya added that it was wrong for ASUU to jump into conclusion based on the letter, which he said did not tell the whole story, as there were other documents they were not privy to that empowered the former registrar, Mr Akin Lewis, to backdate Fagbohun’s promotion.

“The registrar was acting on the records available to him; he did not commit any crime. Besides, they have written to the council; they should wait for the outcome. A joint committee of the council and senate is looking into the matter, and afterwards, council will take a decision and ASUU should therefore not divert the attention by claiming that the authorities want to dismiss their leaders,” he said.

Responding to the demands of the union, Governor Ambode said he was aware of the matter in question.

Speaking through his Senior Special Assistant on Labour Matters, Mr Babatunde Oladeinde, Ambode assured the protesters that everything would soon be settled.

He promised that the government would ensure that justice reigns and normalcy is restored to the university in the shortest time possible.