Letters

Re: The lingering OAU crisis

Kindly permit me to express my view on the essay of the above title, being the editorial opinion of your newspaper of last Thursday, July 21.

While it is true that journalism in Nigeria is beset by manifold ethical and operational challenges, it is also incontestable that some media professionals are still making conscious efforts to practise sound, informed, and issue-based journalism.

It is among those few minds that I group the men and women of the editorial board of the Nigerian Tribune. Its editorial opinion of last Thursday on the artificial crisis demeaning the glory and prestige of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, stands out as a striking example of the paper’s commitment to the issues of justice, equity, fairness, freedom, good judgement, and the rule of law as pillars for the building of a just, organised, and developed country. Indeed, it is with the uncommon thinking of a paper like the Nigerian Tribune that a society achieves the greater heights of sustainable, all-encompassing progress.

May I observe that the paper is right to posit that President Muhammadu Buhari, the Visitor to OAU, deliberately offended the laws, specifically the Universities Autonomy Act, when he ordered the dissolution of the OAU Governing Council without an investigation to establish the truth of the baseless allegations raked up against it by the disorderly members of the unions in the institution.

I hope the president will go through the editorial once again and take the solutions suggested by the articulate piece, as this will go a long way in returning peace to the university. The decision to appoint an acting Vice Chancellor has set a bad precedent in tertiary education administration in the country, as any qualified candidate for any position may be prevented when some people do not like his face.