They are a group of top senior members of the academic staff of the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo. They call themselves Concerned Stakeholders. Some of them have spent more than 30 years as lecturers in the 36-year-old university. Professor Martins Anetekhai, who is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies and chairman of the Conflicts Management and Reconciliation Committee of the university, has spent 35 years. He, alongside his colleagues in the system, including Professor Babatunde Yusuf (Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences), Professor Abiodun Akinpelu (Director, Centre for General Nigerian Studies); Professor Shola Foluso (Head, Theatre Arts and Music, and convener of the meeting) and Dr Bukola Adedoyin (Department of English Studies), met with newsmen to answer questions on the recent dismissal of the secretary, assistant secretary and treasurer of the institution’s chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Dr Anthony Dansu, Dr Adeolu Oyekan and Kemi Abodunrin-Shonibare. TUNBOSUN OGUNDARE was there and brings the excerpts.
My own promotion was backdated too —Akinpelu
How do you see the dismissal of some ASUU officials from LASU service within two years over alleged misconduct?
I have been in LASU for over two decades. I had lectured in other universities before joining LASU. But I must confess that we need some level of discipline in the university. I am not talking about LASU alone but any university. But here in LASU, if there is no discipline, there will be problems.
I was wondering how going through disciplinary measures becomes a crime for a university. I served with the military as a youth corps member. And because I was from the university, I thought I could do things my own way. There was a time they gave some materials to use and I complained that it was not enough and therefore we shouldn’t take them. But before I knew it, I was locked up in a guardroom for two nights.
They said, ‘young man, this is military and not university campus’; that they had their own culture and therefore not the university where you can talk anyhow; that they didn’t do that in the military. That was how they collected all the materials back from us. So, if there is military culture, there should also be academic culture.
We need academic culture if young ones who are coming behind want to join the team to become professors in universities. If we are not disciplined, I wonder where we are going. So, we are yet to see where we have to stop disciplinary measures in the universities.
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What exactly are you trying to say?
I will answer this question using personal experience. Sometime in the past, I had faced the Senior Staff Disciplinary Committee headed by the vice chancellor in this same hall – Senate Chamber. Heaven did not fall. I didn’t involve you pressmen. ASUU as a body was here and didn’t also involve pressmen on my behalf. Was it because I wasn’t the chairman of ASUU? I was to be dismissed too. I went back home and appealed to the council and the decision was changed and here I am today. The man that holds the first PhD in LASU now said how come you wanted to sell LASU to NUC [National Universities Commission]? Where is the logicality in that?
They discussed the matter in this same room for over three hours and at the end of the day, I was discharged and acquitted. And my promotion was even backdated. All this issue of backdating of promotion is not new in LASU. Those who are talking now, are they professors? I was Lecturer I on January 4, 1994. So, if a Lecturer I is telling a professor that your position was backdated, do they know how to backdate? Do they know how they do it? Had they done it before? My own associate professorship in the same university was backdated. Did I know any registrar before that was done?
No. Did I lobby? No. I was only doing my own job and I was even paid over N1 million as accumulated arrears because of the backdated paper. I spent 14 years as a senior lecturer and seven years as associate professor here in LASU. Heaven didn’t fall. So, what is the problem? Let us allow peace to reign in LASU. Even the former chairman of ASUU, Dr Adekunle Idris’ promotion was equally backdated. He is SL now. He was LI before. So, why are we crying about backdating? That the vice chancellor shouldn’t be a professor, as if they had been one before? The way they are heating up the system is unnecessary.
So, it is a normal process that is going on just as the chairman of the reconciliation committee has said. At the end of the day, the council might say ‘we have looked into your case’ and ask them to return to their duty posts, like my own case. So, the situation where we are looking for documents to implicate people at all costs is unusual in ASUU – trying to pull people down at all costs. That is the same way they tried to pull down distinguished Professor Peter Okebukola, a man who is number 23 in research education globally, a respected scholar who is well known worldwide. This same set of ASUU exco wanted to pull the man down at all costs.
What are they doing all these for? We shouldn’t continue this way. LASU is changing for the better and this is obvious. We don’t want to know who the vice chancellor is. We are stakeholders in the system. If the vice chancellor misbehaves, we will tell him the same way. We don’t look at faces. We met this oga – Professor Anetekhai – here. He is like own teacher. He doesn’t look at anybody’s face. He will tell you nothing but the truth. And that is why we usually pass our issues through the conflict resolution committee. We take matters to them but this set of ASUU exco is not ready, because there could be a dismissal and there could also be a reversal. So, if we are trying to bring about a better LASU, nobody should try to stop the process.
This is my 35th year in LASU, nobody is witch-hunting anybody —Prof Anetekhai
How would you react to the dismissals?
Well, it is just a university routine. Somebody was suspected to have committed some form of misconduct and went through the due process and at the end of the day, a decision was made. They still have the liberty and opportunity to appeal to council. If such an appeal turns out negative, they can go to the visitor to the university who is the governor of the state and if that also fails, they can seek redress in court as the last resort.
But how do you view their case?
As the chairman of the Conflict Management and Reconciliation Committee of this university, I don’t take sides on any issue otherwise the confidence will be eroded. My duty is to ensure that peace reigns in the system. And there must be adherence to the rule of law by all stakeholders across levels. So, whosoever is at the helm of affairs must stick to the rule of law. In this case, if the aggrieved are not satisfied, they can seek redress as I have pointed out. There is no need to heat up the system because what has happened in LASU as regards the issue in focus is a normal process.
I have been in this university for 35 years and I have seen it all. There is no vice chancellor I have not worked with. Even the history of the union in this school, I can tell. I am not interested in the politics of the union, even though I am a member. The fact that you are a union member does not place you above the law that is governing the system. If you are a union member and there is some kind of friction and you feel pained, you move to the next level to complain. Professors are the leaders of a university. So, if by tomorrow, the vice chancellor is not doing well, we will call him to order. That is who we are. Professors are the good ambassadors of a university and the pillars on which the university is built. It is our responsibility is to ensure that we keep measures for the smooth and peaceful running of the university. The current leadership is a rare blend this university had never had. So, the question of somebody witch-hunting another is not here in LASU. Any system with no rule of law will never progress. That is a reflection of what is going on generally in the country. I won’t say more than that.
Somebody in OOU can’t be dictating to us in LASU –Prof Yusuf
How would ou react to the issue at stake, particularly with regard to the victimisation allegation levelled by the dismissed ASUU officials against the authorities?
There is nothing like that. Does a union surround itself with just five or six people? No. Many of us in this hall, including my humble self, were once ASUU officials in this university. I served as a vice chairman. So, people should ask if the leadership of the union is for a set of people for life. Or how can you complete your tenure and still want to remain in office at all costs? We have about 800 academic staff in LASU. So, let them step aside for others to come in. And somebody cannot be in OOU [Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye] and be determining our fate or dictating to us here in LASU. I joined LASU as a lecturer first before becoming an ASUU member, so LASU first before ASUU.
What actually is the content of the confidential documents allegedly stolen and is the allegation of ASUU something to worry about?
I will start from an issue of two years ago when the chairman and vice chairman of ASUU were dismissed. Yes, they were dismissed after being found culpable in the offences levelled against them. There were other academic and non-academic staff that were equally dismissed. Coming back to the issue at stake, I have worked in the private sector before. Apart from that, go to UNN, go to OAU, go to UNILAG and so on and forth. The law must take its course against anyone who has committed a professional misconduct.
And that is why we have provisional conditions of service. The rules are not ambiguous. Any infraction against the rules, the school must take action and that is what LASU has done. So, if I happen to be the chairman or secretary of ASUU, does that give me immunity? I was once an acting chairman of ASUU and substantive vice chairman of ASUU here in LASU. My chairman then is here with us in this hall. So, does that mean that once I have committed a crime, nothing should happen to me? That cannot work here.
There are always rules in any system. Generally, the Lagos State Civil Service Law must not find any staff in possession of official document without authorisation. Doing so and being found culpable is outright dismissal. That is also in our conditions of service in LASU which all the staff know.
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The content, sir…
I will talk about it. Even though I am not a member of the council that promotes staff, I will explain with a background. Just last week, so many staff – over 200 of them – across cadres were promoted and some among them got their promotions backdated.
The chairman of ASUU-LASU, when I was the vice chairman, is seated with us here today in this hall. Between 2009 and 2010, you pressmen witnessed a crisis in LASU. Nobody was promoted from June 2009 because of that crisis as the university was shut for six months. Again, we were asked to resume by January 2010 because they set up a decision panel. Then, we were in school till April 2011. We were not satisfied and we embarked on another strike in July and lasted till December.
Precisely December 31, 2010. The then governor of the state, Senator Bola Tinubu and the union leaders sat down at the government house in Marina to iron things out and we resumed in January 2011. So, there were backlogs of promotions and those who perceived that they had been victimised put up a paper regarding that. The late Professor Abubakar Momoh claimed that his promotion was denied in 2006 or thereabouts. His case was considered. He was promoted in 2012 or 2013 and the promotion was backdated. The same thing goes for Professor Ayo Omotayo and some others. As of that time, Professor Fagbohun was no longer a staff of LASU; he left in 2008 for UNILAG. We also had some other staff who resigned for one reason or the other. So, they all put up petitions asking that their cases of promotion that were stepped down be revisited, including that of Professor Fagbohun. Why I am able to give this background is because I am one of the ASUU leaders that negotiated for the backdated promotion.
We had a series of meetings with the then Lagos Head of Service because the governor said we should meet the HoS for whatever issue that we had. So, all genuine cases of outstanding promotion were revisited and considered. At that time, too, I was a member of the board that considered Dr Adekunle Idris to Lecturer I and backdated the promotion, too. Go and ask him, he is still in the system. So, in a nutshell, this is to let people know that there is no way you will be a LASU staff in 2014 and at the same time be promoted same year. The option the school has is, they either deny you or consider you for promotion. There is no way Professor Fagbohun’s promotion won’t be treated whether he was in service or not, when other petitions were being treated. As I was saying, all the various petitions were considered gradually and in turn.
And it was in 2014 at the council meeting that they treated Professor Fagbohun’s paper alongside others. That he was not in service at that time did not mean they should put his file aside. It doesn’t go that way in public service. So, it was not as if only his issue was considered in 2014. So, the claim that he was promoted in 2014 does not arise. Or does it mean that members of the council that approved the promotion were all blind? I just want you to take note of all these. If you are to take the issue of backdating promotion, we have so many cases here in LASU and I want to believe such is applicable to other institutions. So, LASU has done nothing different.
My promotion was also backdated —Prof Fosudo
Do you think the dismissed ASUU officials have no case?
Of course, they don’t. The information they are spreading about the university is nothing but falsehood. That is why some of us within the system deemed it necessary to call this press meeting. We want to put everything in the right perspective. I believe you want to know the truth and the facts. We from this side of the hall will tell you.
What then does a backdated promotion mean to you?
I will explain using personal experience. Between 2011 and 2015, Professor John Obafunwa was the vice chancellor. I worked with him from the beginning until we had an issue. I asked for promotion to the position of associate professor in 2012 and until after he left, I was not granted the promotion. It was in 2016 that my case was brought up again partly because of the petition and all that and by the time I was promoted in 2016, the promotion was backdated to 2012 – four years difference.
So, it is a normal thing. The only thing is that I was not lucky to get the accumulated salary arrears as Professor Akinpelu did during his own time. And the case of victimisation they are also talking about is absolutely not correct. Nobody is victimising anybody. It is only that whoever that committed an offence of misconduct must definitely face the panel to prove their innocence. If after that, the person is found guilty, he or she will be punished and the punishment includes dismissal. That is the rule in LASU. I think we have not forgotten that six professors were dismissed at a go from LASU some years ago.
How about the claim that the VC was not qualified for the position simply because he did not return to LASU after his promotion?
That is immaterial. You don’t have to be in the system to be appointed the vice chancellor of any university, not only LASU. Let me give you examples. Professor Lateef Hussain was in the University of Ibadan when he was appointed LASU VC. The late Professor Ademola Akinsode was in Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-iwoye, when he was also appointed LASU VC. So, that he didn’t return to LASU, I repeat, is inconsequential.