To say that the sole administration imposed at the University of Abuja has been at a heavy cost is to express the obvious. The new leadership contraption has not only reduced the university to an ‘occupied entity’, but the whole gamut of its operations is now dictated by political expediency and the whims of the imposed administrators It is an altogether new and strange experience for a university community hitherto used to being administered by prescribed statutory bodies and officers and in prescribed ways and manners. Even in past occasional periods of crisis, the institution has never suffered such an imposition of unlawful leadership with a strangely inchoate mandate.

The current combination of what a witty friend called the ‘Sole Council’ personified by the newly appointed Pro-Chancellor and Chairman, Senator Lanre Tejuoso, and the ‘Sole Administrator’ embodied by the unlawful acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Patricia Manko Lar, at the helm of affairs at the University of Abuja, represents the ugliest face of sole administration ever unleashed on any Nigerian university. Since the commencement of university development in Nigeria in 1948 with the establishment of the University of Ibadan, no university has been visited with such desecration and awful disgrace as perpetrated by the Tinubu Administration on the national capital’s premier university. Not even by Abacha, who appointed a military general as university administrator, or any other military junta of past years. This is a civilian dispensation that should exemplify civility, decorum, law and orderliness, and due process.

Conceived and established as a model two-in-one university to represent and reflect the face of the nation’s evolving capital in its finest grandeur, operations, and governance and management ethos, the dreams behind the founding of the University of Abuja have suddenly been crashed by the recent sordid missteps of the government of the day. Arising from the imperial stroke of the pen of approval by President Tinubu, the university is now governed and managed by an imposed leadership contraption with all the attendant iniquities. This followed the unlawful removal of the Governing Council and the newly appointed Vice-Chancellor, Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi, from office. It was a move that defied logic, reason, and legal basis, and can not but remain unexplainable to date. Given that in life, actions do have consequences, the imposition of the sole administration has continued to engender inevitable repercussions on the University of Abuja, nay, the wider Nigerian university system

First, there is a renewed crisis of identity, image, and confidence, especially among the academics at the University of Abuja. The advent of sole administration has dealt a major blow to the professional pride and corporate harmony of the otherwise dynamic and bubbling academia. On the one hand, the silent majority have remained shocked and confused, but at the same time resentful and opposed to the imposed administrators. Even if they can not forcefully assert it. On the other hand, the vocal minority has not only accepted but also hailed the sole administration as a mark of “divine intervention” in the affairs of the university. Not only that, this latter group, known as the G43 or G44, points to this strange development as the crowning outcome of their recent relentless noise and politics of hate against the now ousted 7th substantive Vice-Chancellor of the University, Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi. It did not matter to them that this development eroded the University’s autonomy and further threatened the aspirations of their key members and financiers towards occupying the topmost position of the university.

Comprised of some well-known contestants in the last transition process for appointing a new Vice-Chancellor and their associates and friends, this group came unstuck; and appeared to have lost the plot when a visitation team from the national chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) last week arrived the University of Abuja on a fact-finding mission. This was a sequel to the two petitions the group submitted to the national body against the local branch executive committee for allegedly compromising the Union’s principles during the last transition process. However, when it was allowed to defend its petitions, the group not only shamelessly avoided the visitation team but also started a campaign of calumny against ASUU for daring to interfere with what their members perceived as “God’s intervention” at the University. Not minding that they dragged the Union into the saga in the first place. Consequently, intellectual honesty and principled stance have taken flight from the campus sociopolitical space, while professional timidity, primordial politicking, and mass scramble for positions under the unlawful sole administration are now on the ascendancy.

The convergence of the desire for legitimacy by the unlawful sole administrators and the unconscionable pursuit of positions and career promotions by a constellation of internal opportunistic forces has culminated in the desecration of governance and management structures and the ethos of the Institution. Already, three professors have been appointed as senior special assistants to the acting vice chancellor in the spheres of academic matters, administration and student matters, and research affairs. These positions are not only alien and strange to the system, but they are deliberately created to sidestep and erode the duties and responsibilities of subsisting statutory officers such as deputy Vice-Chancellors and the Dean of Students. Among the three new appointees, one is a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and the other two are former members of the university’s Governing Council. That they were eager to accept to serve as personal aides to a fellow professor serving in an unlawful position speaks volumes about how low the academia has sunk under the new unpalatable dispensation at the University of Abuja.

Besides, the acting Vice-Chancellor is observed to have added a queer dimension of signing the appointment letters of the new appointees herself, instead of the Registrar who is the officer statutorily responsible for that. Whether it is due to a lack of trust and confidence in the system’s bureaucracy or an act of sheer approximation of newfound power, acting as both the approving and conveying officer is inimical to administrative best practices and does not bode well for the standing and image of the institution in the comity of Nigerian universities. This is in addition to shattering team spirit and corporate harmony and statutorily defined division of labour in the system. With more of such administrative changes and inelegant practices underway in the less than five months remaining of tenure of the acting Vice-Chancellor, it should be feared that the University of Abuja would have lost its essence and be grasping for breath as a citadel of learning by the time Professor Lar would be returning to her base at the University of Jos.

Furthermore, humongous resources of the university are allegedly being expended to conduct the activities of the two-imposed administrators. In particular, the acting Vice-Chancellor is said to be accommodated at a hotel with members of her large contingent from Jos, comprising nine personal aides. One can only imagine the total cost to the University’s purse hosting such several persons at a hotel for six months. This is in addition to other financial expenditures involving sundry contract and procurement activities, travels, office expenses, and other logistics, even when she has neither the locus standi nor appropriate bodies of Council to authorise them. The same applies to the expenditure on the activities of the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the one-man Council. The extant laws contemplate neither the dissolution of a Council without reason of incompetence or corruption nor the existence and operations of a one-man Council. Hence, all activities and attendant expenditures on Senator Lanre Tejuoso by the University being authorised by the acting Vice-Chancellor are ultra vires.

Beyond the four walls of the University of Abuja, the imposition of sole administration there has reverberated nationwide and caused anxiety and consternation in the entire Nigerian University system. Observers and several stakeholders in the nation’s tertiary education sector are miffed at the unwarranted and provocative development, which is capable of throwing the universities into another round of crises. Accusing fingers are increasingly being pointed at the Federal Ministry of Education, particularly the Minister, Dr. Morufu Alausa, for his questionable role in the whole saga. I read somewhere that the ousted Vice-Chancellor has not been given a letter to that effect and, hence, is not able to formally hand it over to the acting Vice-Chancellor. If that is true, it means that Minister Alausa goofed, and it could only result in belittling the government machinery.  Government business is a serious one, especially in a democratic setting, which requires constant application of rules, law and order, and due process. Had the Minister ensured that President Tinubu conformed to the extant laws and toed the path of due process in dealing with the University of Abuja, the nation would have been saved from the current embarrassing scenario at the Institution. However, the good thing is that the situation is not beyond redemption; once the President can sidestep the Minister of Education and act as a statesman, he can do what is needed.

The only way to avoid the impending catastrophe at the University of Abuja and its replication in other universities is for the government to immediately reverse the sole administration by reinstating the ousted Governing Council and 7th substantive Vice-Chancellor, Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi. Anything short of that will be a continued negation of the university’s autonomy, extant laws, and due process. One is certain that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would not like to be remembered for undermining the autonomy of Nigerian universities and subverting their good governance and management.

Dr Yushau is an adjunct lecturer, Faculty of Social Science, University of Abuja.