ASUU wants Ambode to commence search for new LASU VC, sets up visitation panel

Five months after the Vice Chancellor, Lagos State University (LASU), Prof. John Obafunwa was banished from the campus by aggrieved worker on March 16, the school’s branch of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU-LASU), has called on Visitor to the school, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, to kick-start the process of shopping for Obafunwa’s replacement.

The union is also urging the Visitor to urgently empanel a visitation panel that would ascertain the immediate and remote cause of the controversy of seismic proportions that has bedeviled the school in the last three years or thereabouts.

These demands were made at a press conference, given by the Zonal Co-ordinator, ASUU Lagos Zone, Dr. Adesola Nassir, at the Old Sociology Hall, LASU, Ojo Campus.

Reading from a text titled, “Ending the Crisis in Lagos State University: A Clarion Call to all Stakeholders,” Nassir said, “the commencement of the process for the appointment of a vice chancellor is late already. We advise that the process commences immediately, and due process without any interference be enforced. LASU cannot afford to get it wrong again.

“Our union is not unaware of some clandestine moves to unleash some ill-informed student groups, mainly from outside LASU to foment additional crisis in the University. Our union wishes to advise our students, who are our ally in the restoration of dignity to LASU, to focus on their studies as our members are doing all within their means to ensure a smooth session. Examinations have been concluded and scripts marked.”

He added that, “for whatever reasons, the Visitor to LASU cannot afford to reject the call by the union for a visitation panel because it is on one hand, statutorily due; and on the other, the artificial earthquake engineered by the outgoing university administration has impacted corrosively on the founding pillars of the institution, such that the treatment that will bestow a lasting solution must start with thorough and diligent diagnosis.