By Emmanuel Udom
The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) and the Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL) have called on the Minister of Education, Mr Tahir Mamman, to decisively address the lingering crisis rocking the Federal College of Education, Technical (FCET), Akoka, Lagos, before it snowballs into a national disaster.
The president of CDHR, Mr Debo Adeniran, who doubles as the chairman of CACOL, in a press statement, alleged that some disgruntled workers of the college locked up their Provost’s office and issued him a quit notice from his official residence.
According to him, led by a few members of the Senior Staff Union of Colleges of Education (SSUCOEN), FCET chapter, the protesters insisted that with the amendment of the Educational Colleges Act 2023, which introduced a five-year single term of office for provosts and other principal officers of the colleges, the tenure of Dr Wahab Azeez ended on May 26, 2024.
However, the provost asserted that he was appointed for the first term of four years in 2019 and that having been duly reappointed by the institution’s governing council in 2023, he already resumed his second term in office on May 27, 2023, before the amended act was signed into law on June 12, 2023.
Following letters by the unions seeking clarification on the tenure of office of the provost based on the amended act, the Minister wrote the unions in May, affirming the legality of Dr Azeez’s second term of four years.
But the protesters ignored the minister’s verdict and continued to stage unjustified daily protests on the campus, denying management members access to their offices.
It was reported by some sections of the media that the minister had invited the provost and the warring factions, especially the leaders of staff unions on the campus, to a reconciliation meeting scheduled to hold at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.
The gathering was chaired by the Minister of State for Education, Yusuf Sununu, who represented Mr Mamman, and it was reportedly agreed that the provost should be allowed to operate under the supervision of the Chairman of the Governing Council of the college while all staff must stop the demonstration.
In the statement, Mr Adeniran expressed shock that the Minister did not make further enquiry about the outcome of his intervention in the matter which is still lingering and jeopardizing the academic activities of the students and thereby denying them the benefits of full-fledged tutelage that they deserve from the college.
“We are worried that if the crisis lingers further than it presently is, and the provost is not allowed to perform his official duties optimally, it is the tax payers money that is being wasted since both the provost and the staff that are spearheading the crisis will still be entitled to their salaries and allowances even when the aggrieved staff were only representing personal interests as they are not in any way duty bound to do what they are doing that’s disrupting academic and other activities of the college against the advice of the Ministry of Education and other legal authorities.
“We do not expect the Minister to allow his wise counsel to be thrown overboard just as the security agencies are not expected to allow such illegality to continue unchecked, especially when the ministry, backed by extant legal instruments, has confirmed it that the Provost still has a term of office to execute.
“It is against this backdrop that we caution that the security agencies would not claim that they do not know what has been going on in that college for some time now and we would like to use this medium to call on them not to allow the skirmish degenerate into full blown violence which may lead to bodily harm, loss of limbs or even lives before they react to douse the attendant damages to lives and public property.
“The minister should realize that it will be a negative . and record as well as a stain on his CV if he fails to resolve the dispute immediately.
“He should brace himself up, put all arsenals in place to call all warring factions to order and iron out grey areas that all parties would agree on as the opposite will be an ill-wind that blows no one any good,” the human rights activist said.