The crises engulfing the appointments of Vice Chancellors in Nigerian public universities (federal and state) reached fever pitch in the last two years. Even premier Federal universities are affected, including the University of Ibadan; the University of Lagos; and Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife as well as recently established universities, notably, Federal University at Oye-Ekiti. Similarly, notable state universities have experienced similar crises. They include Lagos State University; Rivers State University of Science and Technology; and Enugu State University of Science and Technology.
The immediate causes of the crises are threefold. First and foremost is the overbearing influence of either the Chairman of the Governing Council or the Vice Chancellor or both. In most cases, these leaders throw ethics to the wind and insert themselves in the process in order to ensure the selection and subsequent appointment of their so-called “anointed” candidate. The suspicion is often rife that these leaders want a compliant candidate, who would do their bidding—the Chairman probably to have his way with funds and the Vice Chancellor to protect his inadequacies after leaving office and to keep drawing funds from the university, which only his anointed candidate could facilitate.
Whether this is their true intention or not is immaterial. It is the appearance of guilt that matters. Even more importantly, interference with the process often spurs the University Senate and unions to cry foul, leading to internal crisis in which these bodies are thrown into conflict with the university Vice Chancellor on the one hand and the Council Chairman on the other. The result often is a stalemate as happened at UI and LASU, leading to repetitions of the process.
The second issue, often in service of the one identified above, is the deliberate flouting of the University Act as well as the rules, regulations, and conventions governing the appointment of a Vice Chancellor. Again, in most cases, the advertisement often deviates from established rules, while the procedures, clearly set out in the regulations, are often flouted.
The procedures are clearcut: The Registrar submits the advertisement to Council for vetting, following which it is published in at least two national newspapers. Manipulation often begins with the qualifications set out for prospective applicants and who receives the applications. Council thereafter sets up a Search Committee, comprised of members of Council and Senate. Its function is to monitor the inflow of applications and also reach out to exceptional candidates, who may not have applied.
Once the application deadline is reached, the Registrar submits all received applications to the Search Committee, which passes them on to yet another Committee of Council, namely, the Joint Committee of Senate and Council. The Search and Joint Committees are chaired by members of Council. The two committees should not have overlapping membership. It is the duty of the Joint Committee to screen the applications in accordance with the application guidelines and make a shortlist for Council’s consideration. The Council, as a body, creates the scoring matrix, the criteria for ranking the candidates, and then ranks them according to their scores.
Ideally, Vice Chancellors have no role whatsoever in the appointment of a successor. It is not their duty to groom a successor, as some erroneously suggest. Rather, they should mentor the academic community and, indeed, the entire university community, by displaying ethical, academic, and administrative leadership. To be sure, there are VCs who live by these standards. Unfortunately, however, a number of them flout necessary procedures, by using their office as a clearing house for applications, a role normally assigned to the Registrar, in his or her capacity as the Secretary to Council. Some overbearing Council Chairmen also often insert themselves into the process, some for the reasons stated above and others out of sheer ignorance.
A third issue is the injection of primordial considerations—ethnicity and religion as well geopolitics, particularly, the demand for appointing a “son of the soil”, that is, someone from the locality in which the university is situated. This unfortunate requirement applies to both Federal and State universities and involves both the elite and ordinary folks, including thugs and other riffraffs. This problem recently underlined the protests against the choice of Vice Chancellors at the University of Ibadan, where the elite demanded a son of the soil, and Obafemi Awolowo University, where riffraffs, apparently without elite input, made a similar demand.
Yet, from all indications, the process at Ife was rule-governed and rancour free. That’s why, as a first generation student on the Ile-Ife campus of OAU and a lecturer there for over a decade, I was so disturbed by the recent senseless protests, more so when they involved the barbaric display of charms and amulets, that I called on the Ooni of Ife, Oba Eniitan Ogunwusi, Ojaja II, twice to implore him to intervene, which he did but not as successfully as he had hoped. Negotiations are usually difficult with leaderless protesters, leading the Vice Chancellor, Professor Eyitope Ogunbodede, to request police reinforcement on campus.
The implications of these issues for the place and functions of the university in society are far-reaching. In advanced democracies the university is where political leaders are trained in addition to its basic mission of teaching, research, and service to the community at large. Ideally, the university is a microcosm of the larger society. It is the bastion of liberal democracy, fairness, and justice. Unfortunately, however, the issues reviewed above indicate the poverty of leadership and democratic values in our universities, not to speak of the abandonment of meritocracy.
Equally disturbing is the rate at which universities erode their own autonomy by inviting external arbiters. As if the interventions of JAMB and the NUC are not enough, university leaders invite external intervention, by throwing their institutions into needless crises. Thus, the Federal Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, had to intervene through the NUC, in the UI case, while Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu intervened twice in the LASU case. Perhaps in apprehension of possible crisis, the Ife Governing Council sold out their powers by needlessly inviting a representative of the Federal Character Commission to the interview process.
What is even more disturbing is the extent to which the behaviours of many a university leader simulate or replicate the behaviours of political leaders. Thus, the difference between the recent crises of leadership in our universities and the chaos within the political parties in preparation for the forthcoming presidential election is a matter of detail. They both demonstrate the poverty of leadership and the disrespect for established rules, regulations, and conventions.