Sir: The Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR) and Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, hereby jointly call on the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, to urgently and decisively address the lingering crisis rocking the Federal College of Education, Technical (FCET), Akoka, Lagos, which has already become a public concern lest it snowballs into a national disaster.We are aware that some disgruntled workers of the college allegedly locked up their provost’s office and issued him a quit notice from his official residence. 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 had ended on May 26.
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. However, the protesters ignored the minister’s verdict and stubbornly 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 invited the provost and the warring factions, especially the leaders of staff unions on the campus, to a reconciliation meeting at the ministry’s headquarters in Abuja.
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It was reported that the resolution reached at the meeting among others stated that: “The provost should be allowed to operate under the supervision of the chairman of the Governing Council of the College whilst all staff cease to protest forthwith.”
We are however surprised that the Minister of Education 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 taxpayers’ money that is being wasted since both the provost and the staff spearheading the crisis will still be entitled to their salaries and allowances.
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.
We call on the Minister of Education to swiftly intervene in the crisis rocking the institution which has already affected academic and administrative activities on the campus. The minister should realize that it will be a negative advertisement 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.