The Nation Newspaper

Tag: OAU

  • OAU Alumni to build N15b hostels

    OAU Alumni to build N15b hostels

    The alumni association of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, has earmarked N15.5 billion for the construction of hostels in the institution.

    The Worldwide President , Segun Oke, announced this at this year reunion programme , explaining that the hostels would accommodate 8,000 students.

    Oke said the  new accommodation facilities would ease student residential difficulties on campus.

    He added that the association also facilitated the on-going renovation of the Senate building worth N1 billion.

    According to him, the association has renovated virtually all the existing male and female hostels on campus while renovations were also carried out at the Faculty of Agriculture Lecture Theatre, among others.

    He added: “Scholarships were given out to over 1,000 students to encourage them in their academic pursuits and over 2,000 books were donated to the Hezekiah  Oluwasanmi Library to enhance learning.

    In her comment at the event, a chief  prosecutor and legal adviser at the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, frowned at oppression of the vulnerable in Africa.

    The jurist, who advocated that justice should prevail in all cases relating to maltreatment of the vulnerable in the society, urged judges to right all wrongs concerning injustice.

    Bensouda also advocated that the rule of law should be upheld to protect humanity against criminality.

    She said: “It pains me a lot when I see injustice not being given adequate attention in a court of law. One of my commitments in life is to see that justice reigns in every circle and to ensure that the right of every individual is protected.”

  • Newly-reinstated OAU Students’ Union gets leaders

    Newly-reinstated OAU Students’ Union gets leaders

    Barely two weeks after the reinstatement of the activities of the Students’ Union of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, new leaders have been appointed.

    The leaders, who were elected across faculties in the university, were to serve in the capacity of electoral commissioners and petitioners.

    The activities of the OAU-SU were reinstated on Oct. 27 by the authorities of the university in a letter referenced Ro.2/Vol. VI/217.

    “This is to inform the generality of the students and the entire university community that the order of the suspension of Students’ Union activities by the university authorities via a release referenced Ro.2/Vol. VI/180, dated Dec. 3, 2015 has been lifted,” the reinstatement notice read in part.

    After the election held on Nov. 4, Fadele Olusola emerged as the electoral chairman;  Secretary, Akande Paul; Public Relations Officer, Durodola Lukmon; Financial Secretary, Sodiq Rauf; Welfare Officer, Aina Oluwasanmi.

    Also, Bolutife Olusola emerged as the electoral petitions chairman; financial secretary, Faleye Kolawole; PRO, Moses Abundance; and welfare officer, Akoledowo Eniola.

    The election for the secretary of the electoral petitions Commission was postponed after the contestants had equal votes on three consecutive times.

    Before the election, the OAU’s acting Dean of Divisional Students’ Affairs, Prof. Grace Akinola, challenged the elected students to be responsible leaders.

    She explained that the school management was interested in moulding leaders that would change the world.

    Meanwhile, the National Association of Nigerian Students, in a press statement by its Senate President, Comrade Salam  Oyejide, asked the new electoral commission and petition leaders to be transparent.

    He said, “It is important to note that your emergence at this critical period of our Union naturally bestows enormous responsibilities on your shoulders.

    “We at the Senate Secretariat of NANS enjoin you to conduct free, fair, and credible elections into the various organs of our dear Union.

    “We equally besiege you to excuse your personal interests from this all important task in order to have a responsible and responsive Students Union leadership.”

  • Uproar in OAU over workers’ unpaid allowances

    Uproar in OAU over workers’ unpaid allowances

    The Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Senate meeting was going on peacefully until some workers stormed the venue, protesting the alleged non-payment of their allowances. The protesters allegedly manhandled some members of the Senate, but the school says there is no cause for alarm, as the issues are being resolved, reports WALE AJETUNMOBI.

    Barely two months after Prof Anthony Elujoba assumed office as the Acting Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Osun State, the honeymoon between him and the workers seems over. Another crisis has erupted between management and the workers’ unions over unpaid salary arrears and allowances.

    Members of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and the Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU), it was learnt,  disrupted the last OAU Senate meeting because of the VC’s alleged failure  to pay the allowances.

    A source said some members of the workers’ union threatened Prof Elujoba’s life, an allegation the NASU chairman, Wole Odewumi, denied.

    The school’s spokesman, Abiodun Olanrewaju, said no one threatened the VC’s life when the meeting was disrupted. He, however, said some of the workers were unruly, adding that they “manhandled” some members of the Senate.

    Prof Elujoba’s appointment as  Acting VC on July 21 was greeted with spontaneous celebrations. Workers and students trooped out in a carnival-like procession round the campus immediately the announcement was made.

    In academic circles, the celebration indicated acceptance of the new OAU helmsman. Elujoba’s appointment came after months of controversy over the selection of a substantive VC, which pitted the university workers against the Governing Council.

    A member of the Senate told CAMPUSLIFE that SSANU and NASU members had initially threatened to deal with the Bursar, Mrs Josephine Akeredolu, during a management meeting held on August 29. CAMPUSLIFE gathered that Mrs Akeredolu was sent on compulsory leave for her safety.

    At the meeting, it was gathered, the VC was allegedly forced to sign a document, promising to pay 10 months arrears of the second tranche of earned allowances codenamed “Productivity Allowance”.

    The Acting VC, CAMPSULIFE learnt, told the workers’ unions that paying the allowances from the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) would violate the Federal Government’s directive, which prohibits higher institutions from disbursing their IGR and investment funds to pay emoluments.

    CAMPUSLIFE gathered that Prof Elujoba explained to the Senate members that the government had not released the second tranche of the earned allowances to the university, saying he had verified from the school’s banks  to know whether the funds had been remitted to pay the allowances.

    The demand for payment of the earned allowances led to a protracted crisis between the unions and the immediate past VC, Prof Bamitale Omole.

    Speaking to our correspondent on telephone, Olanrewaju said: “It is not correct that anybody threatened to attack the VC. That is not the true picture of what transpired at the last Senate meeting. The VC addressed members of the union when some of them became unruly, because they learnt that the Bursar was at the meeting, which I also personally attended.

    “It was the VC that called the unions’ leaders to sort out the salary issues of members of staff school of the university. So, that was the purpose and primary aim of the meeting. The members of the unions came and felt they should raise concern about their earned allowances because of the presence of the Bursar at the meeting.

    “They felt everything would be sorted out there. So, they started singing and chanting. Some of them also believed it was an opportunity for the Bursar to tell the VC where the money of the university is being kept. They held virtually everyone at the meeting hostage, but they did not touch the VC. Some people were manhandled. But, nobody threatened the VC.”

    On the alleged compulsory leave of the Bursar, the spokesman said: “Mrs Akeredolu requested to go on leave because she had some accumulated leave she had not observed. It has nothing to do with threat to her life.”

    At the time of this report, there was palpable fear in the school as  SSANU and NASU vowed not to back down on their demands. For peace to reign, the unions listed four demands that the acting VC must meet.

    The demands included stopping and returning of pension deductions, implementation of two-step salary differential for teaching staff, payment of 15 per cent outstanding salary arrears, and payment of earned allowances, hazard, excess workload and overtime.

    It remained unclear how the management would meet the workers’ demand, but a highly-placed source said Prof Elujoba was considering the payment of the workers’ allowances in violation of the government’s directive if only to allow peace to reign.

    Denying that the unions disrupted the Senate meetings, Odewumi told CAMPUSLIFE on telephone “Who told you we disrupted the Senate meeting? There was nothing like that. The acting VC has set up a task force on the unpaid allowances and we are still working on it. We met with the task force members last Friday and the meeting was postponed to Wednesday (yesterday).

    “If it was not for the Sallah holiday, we would have concluded the meeting last Monday. But, by Friday (tomorrow), everything would be okay. I can confirm to you that there is no crisis in OAU, at least for now.”

    Odewumi also said it was not true that the unions forced the Acting VC to sign a document to pay the earned allowances. “As I said earlier, there is no truth in the rumour. We will not force anyone to pay our lawful allowances. The last meeting we held with the VC went smoothly and I have the report of the meeting,” he said.

     

     

     

  • Makinde becomes first OAU female professor of Public Admin

    Dr Juliana Taiwo Makinde (Ph.D) has been promoted to the rank of professor, therefore becoming the first female Professor of Public Administration in the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State.

    She is the wife of Moses Akinola Makinde, a retired Professor of Philosophy in the same university, who is currently the Director General/Chief Executive Officer of Awolowo Centre for Philosophy, Ideology and Good Governance.

    A statement by her husband said: “Taiwo Makinde moved from confidential secretary to the highly esteemed rank of professor which is the intellectual pinnacle; a remarkable feat that has inspired confidential secretaries that, with dedication and dint of hard work and cooperation from their husbands, the sky is their limit.

    “She worked as a Confidential Secretary in both old Oyo State and Osun State in various ministries and in the judiciary where she worked with prominent judges including Justice Atinuke Ige, Justice Akin Apara and Justice Agbaje-Williams.

    “She took a leave of absence to accompany her husband as a Fulbright scholar at the Ohio University, Athens, Ohio where she enrolled as a fresh undergraduate in the 1983/84 academic year.  She finished her first year undergraduate where she was placed on the Dean’s List for her outstanding performance.

    “She came back with her husband to complete her undergraduate programme and bagged a First Class (Hons.) Degree in Education (English) at the then University of Ife in 1987, thus challenging her husband who bagged a First  Class ( Hons) Degree in Philosophy at the University of Toronto, Canada in 1969.

    “Mrs. Makinde was still a confidential secretary when she got her Master’s degree in Public Administration (MPA) after which she was appointed Special Adviser (Administration and Protocol) during the Administration of Alhaji Adetunji  Adeleke, the first Executive Governor of Osun State in 1992.

    “She retired from the civil service of Osun State to take up contract appointment as a lecturer in OAU and went ahead to do her M.Sc degree in Public Administration and later obtained her PhD degree in Public Administration in 2008.”

  • ‘There are scandalous issues in OAU’

    ‘There are scandalous issues in OAU’

    The Chairman of the Non academic Staff of University, ( NASU), Obafemi Awolowo University Chapter, Ile-Ife, Osun state, Wole Odewunmi has alleged that there are scandalous issues going on in the institution.
    Odewunmi spoke at a question and answer session during a National dialogue and book launch of a manual on “Social media: A panacea to constant Nigerian Universities Crisis in Nigeria” coauthored by Olanrewaju Oyedeji and Lukmon Fasasi .
    He revealed that there is a second phase of the protest ongoing to solve, once and for all, all the atrocities committed on campus by principal officers of the institution.
    “The second phase are the issues of atrocities on this campus. We have more than enough papers to support this fact. The papers have been sent to the EFCC and Presidency. The Presidency has promised that the University must progress peacefully”
    He explained that a panel from Federal Government will be set up to probe the allegations supported with documents.

  • Still on the OAU crisis

    One image that lingered on the screen of my mind for a few days as I consciously monitored the crisis invented by the Non-Academic Staff of University (NASU) and Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) of Obafemi Awolowo University over the process that produced Prof. Ayobami Salami as the 11th Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the university is that of the mob in William Shakespeare’s plays. Specifically, the mob depicted in the eponymous Julius Caesar possesses everything but tact, character, discipline, and structured thinking.

    As a matter of fact, as the seminal play shows, the first casualties of the mob’s actions are those adumbrated virtues. To achieve their nihilistic goals, the mob dispenses with discretion and organised thinking, speaks in decibels higher than their numerical strength, and believes its own lies and passes them off as truths. As the mob loathes civility, so does it detests justice. It does not care about the corroding consequences of choosing evil as good.

    Let’s not pretend about it; the actions of NASU and SSANU members in OAU against the process that threw up Prof. Salami were glaringly in tandem with that of a mob. These unions repudiated civility, embraced indiscipline, and acted lawlessly. The present fragile resolution puts in place by Abuja also satisfies the hankering of the mob.

    In their organised violence, they demanded two things and got them.

    They wanted the Governing Council of the university dissolved. President Muhammadu Buhari, the visitor, granted it without first investigating their claims that the body was incompetent and manipulated the process leading to the appointment of a new Vice Chancellor. They demanded an Acting VC and the visitor obliged them. The two unions boasted they could commit punishable offences and get away with them. They did – they disrupted a meeting of the Governing Council at a point and locked up the members before the Ooni of Ife came to secure their release the following day. The offences of disrupting a lawful meeting and the one of false imprisonment were freely committed by the unions without any corresponding condign legal retribution.

    Even the defunct leadership of NASU in the university hardheartedly beat up representatives of their national executives and seized their vehicle. No comeuppance greeted that behaviour.  The unions said they could determine when the school opens and close. They got it. It was on account of their conducts that the university was shut down in June. They have also swanked that they would only ‘hand over’ the control of the school to the Acting VC of their liking. They abhor dialogue as a means of solving social problem. It is the reason they went to court but decided to take laws into their hands, declaiming that the court would not dispense justice.

    The two bellicose unions did call on the visitor and the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu (someone The Punch newspaper in one of its editorial aptly carpeted for his ‘reckless desecration of university values’), to intervene in the contrived crisis (to quote Femi Macaulay, a columnist with The Nation newspaper) before they carried on too far with their campaign of impunity. The improper intervention of the visitor via the Education Minister in the OAU matter is another striking illustration of the present central administration’s telling incompetence in crisis management.

    The sacking of the OAU Governing Council without an investigation to establish whether it was guilty of the imagined crimes levelled against it by the two unions in the university was hasty and improper and remains an example of how the Visitor picks and chooses when it comes to obeying the law of the land. The law is clear that the Governing Council of a federal university whose tenure has not ended can be disbanded by the visitor where an investigation proves that it is incompetent and corrupt. In fact, the Universities Autonomy Act No.1, 2007 (Section 2A) clearly states that ‘The Council so constituted shall have a tenure of four years from the date of its inauguration provided that where a Council is found to be incompetent and corrupt it shall be dissolved by the visitor and a new Council shall be immediately constituted for the effective functioning of the university’.

    One recalls here the unlawful sacking of 13 vice chancellors of federal universities and their Governing Councils last March. Not even the admittance of the wrong by the visitor compelled a reversal of the illegality.

    Let it be noted that the new peace in OAU is brittle. The solution generated by the visitor is insubstantial. It is a rape of justice that will still boomerang. The visitor ought to know by now that anywhere justice is contemptuously denied as in the case in OAU, unity and peace cannot reign. The cockeyed action of the OAU visitor, to wit doing the bidding of a party to a case without even the least understanding of the core issue, has widened the gulf of disunity in that university. He has done exactly what Chinua Achebe’s Obierika in Things Fall Apart says of the coloniser: ‘He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’ The undisputable fact is that, to borrow the words of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the visitor and the unions in OAU have only ‘scotched the snake, not killed it’. And because the brazenly belligerent unions were not made to account for their follies and lawlessness, they will soon behave like the camel of the Bedouin in a story which after his master acceded to its request to allow it warm its nose in the room later brought in its whole body and deprived its master of his abode. It is a matter of time; the mob is forever besotted to the logic of anarchy and impunity. Anytime SSANU and NASU in OAU or those of the branches in other universities rake up impossible demands and insist on who they want as VCs but get turned down, they will resort to the rule of the mob and make the universities ungovernable.

     

    • Alawode writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

  • OAU crisis: Alumni hail Fed Govt’s intervention

    The national leadership of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Alumni Association has hailed the Federal Government for the quick resolution of the crisis occasioned by the appointment of a new vice chancellor for the institution.

    Addressing reporters after the association’s National Executive Council meeting at Timsed Holiday Resorts, Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State, its National President, Mr. Segun Oke, said the intervention came at the appropriate time to restore sanity to the university.

    He described the appointment of Acting Vice Chancellor, Prof. Anthony Adebolu Elujoba, as perfect.

    Oke, who expressed satisfaction on the choice of Prof. Elujoba, maintained that the intervention has brought the 54-year-old institution on the track of progress.

     

  • OAU and rule of the mob

    One image that lingered on the screen of my mind for a few days as I consciously monitored the crisis invented by the Non-Academic Staff of University (NASU) and the Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Universities (SSANU) of Obafemi Awolowo University over the emergence of the process that produced Prof. Ayobami Salami as the 11th Vice-Chancellor (VC) of the university is that of the mob in William Shakespeare’s plays. Specifically, the mob depicted in the eponymous Julius Caesar possesses everything but tact, character, discipline, and structured thinking.

    As a matter of fact, as the seminal play shows, the first casualties of the mob’s actions are those adumbrated virtues. To achieve their nihilistic goals, the mob dispenses with discretion and organised thinking, speaks in decibels higher than their numerical strength, and believes its own lies and passes them off as truths. As the mob loathes civility, so does it detests justice. It does not care about the corrosive consequences of choosing evil as good.

    The OAU crisis of the last one month was inspired and sustained by the mob. The present fragile resolution puts in place by Abuja also satisfies the hankering of the mob. Let’s not pretend about it; the actions of NASU and SSANU members in OAU against the process that threw up Prof. Salami were glaringly in tandem with that of a mob. These unions behaved violently, repudiated civility, embraced indiscipline, and acted lawlessly. In their organised violence, they demanded two things and got them.

    The NASU and SSANU mob said it wanted the Governing Council of the university dissolved. President Muhammadu Buhari, the Visitor, granted it without first investigating their claims that the body was incompetent and manipulated the process leading to the appointment of a new VC. The mob demanded an Acting VC and the Visitor obliged them. The two rudderless unions boasted they could commit punishable offences and get away with them. They did – they disrupted a meeting of the Governing Council at a point and locked up the members before the Ooni of Ife came to secure their release the following day. The offences of disrupting a lawful meeting and the one of false imprisonment were freely committed by the unions without any corresponding condign legal retribution.

    Even the defunct leadership of NASU in the university hardheartedly beat up representatives of their National Executives and seized their vehicle. No comeuppance greeted that barbarous behaviour.  The unions said they could determine when school open and close. They got it. It was on account of their violent conducts that the university was shut down in June. They have also swanked that they would only ‘hand over’ the control of the school to the Acting VC of their liking. NASU and SSANU in OAU do not believe in civilised conducts. They abhor dialogue as a means of solving social problem. It is the reason they went to court but decided to take laws into their hands, declaiming that the court would not dispense justice. Governed by the mob mentality, the two unions accepted as gospel truth the misinformation given to them by certain roguish minds that the court notice they got for the Governing Council was a restraining injunction to stop the appointment process of a new VC.  They swung into destructive actions by effectively making the school ungovernable.

    For those who wonder why non-state actors thrive in the Nigerian space, I ask them to look to the weak crisis management capacity of state actors. Look to their hollow sense of justice. Those two bellicose unions in OAU did call on the Visitor and the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu (someone The Punch newspaper in one of its editorial aptly carpeted for his ‘reckless desecration of university values’), to intervene in the contrived crisis (to quote Femi Macaulay, a columnist with The Nation newspaper) before they carried on too far with their campaign of impunity. The improper intervention of the Visitor via the Education Minister in the OAU matter is another striking illustration of the present central administration’s telling incompetence in crisis management.

    The sacking of the OAU Governing Council without an investigation to establish whether it was guilty of the imagined crimes levelled against it by the two unions in the university was hasty and improper and remains an example of how the Visitor picks and chooses when it comes to obeying the law of the land. The law is clear that the Governing Council of a federal university whose tenure has not ended can be disbanded by the Visitor where an investigation proves that it is incompetent and corrupt. In fact, the Universities Autonomy Act No.1, 2007 (Section 2A) clearly states that ‘The Council so constituted shall have a tenure of four years from the date of its inauguration provided that where a Council is found to be incompetent and corrupt it shall be dissolved by the Visitor and a new Council shall be immediately constituted for the effective functioning of the University’.

    But because the Visitor is less a man of justice than it is believed, and his Minister of Education an alien to the rule of law, he gave in completely to the demands of the mob in OAU. He trampled on the law, froze the appointment of Prof. Salami, asked for an Acting VC via the back door, and eulogised that to the unquestioning public as justice. This also aligns with the unlawful sacking of 13 VCs of federal universities and their Governing Councils last March. Not even the admittance of the wrong by the Visitor compelled a reversal of the illegality.

    Let it be noted that the new peace in OAU is brittle. The solution generated by the Visitor is insubstantial. It is a rape of justice that will still boomerang. The Visitor ought to know by now that anywhere justice is contemptuously denied as in the case in OAU, unity and peace cannot reign. The cockeyed action of the OAU Visitor, to wit doing the bidding of a party to a case without even the least understanding of the core issue, has widened the gulf of disunity in that university. He has done exactly what Chinua Achebe’s Obierika in Things Fall Apart says of the coloniser: ‘He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart.’ The undisputable fact is that, to borrow the words of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the Visitor and the mob-like unions in OAU have only ‘scotched the Snake, not killed it’. And because the brazenly belligerent unions were not made to account for their follies and lawlessness, they will soon behave like the camel of the Bedouin in a story which after his master acceded to its request to allow it warm its nose in the room later brought in its whole body and deprived its master of his abode. It is a matter of time; the mob is forever besotted to the logic of anarchy and impunity. Anytime SSANU and NASU in OAU or those of the branches in other universities rake up impossible demands and insist on who they want as VCs but get turned down, they will resort to the rule of the mob and make the universities ungovernable.

    Alawode writes from Obafemi Awolowo University

    Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria

  • OAU crisis

    OAU crisis

    •Everyone should respect the rule of law

    For over a month, the Obafemi  Awolowo University has suffered a lockdown. Spurring this paralysis is a logjam arising from conflicts over who should be the prime school’s top officer. Although the university top decision-making body has announced the name of the new vice chancellor and the federal government has appended its signature, the institution has no vice chancellor, the registrar cannot function fully, salaries are on hold and classrooms are quiet.

    This is not the first time the battle to be a university helmsman has generated furore in this country. Often it is a battle of egos, a contest of power blocks, a shadow of political contention in the larger society and, sometimes, an ethnic or religious combat.

    The Ife story is interesting because it seems professor Ayobami Salami has already been picked by the Governing Council after it deliberated on a shortlist of six candidates forwarded to it by the Joint Council of Senate and Selection Board (JCSSB) in line with the rules.

    But two principal stake holders in the university objected. They are the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities (NASU). They accused the JCSSB of foul play, and they objected to the choice of Professor Salami.

    They also took the matter to court and claimed to have obtained a restraining order, although the governing Council said they did not get any restraining order and went along with the exercise. SSANU and NASU objected to the choice of the shortlist in that some of the professors they expected to make it did not. They also took exception to two candidates from outside the campus. They also objected to the inclusion of a professor outside Ife who is allegedly afflicted with stroke.

    During the final interview, only three candidates showed up, including Professor Salami. When the governing council made its choice, the federal government was notified and the Federal Character Commission directed the registrar to notify Professor Salami as the new vice chancellor.

    It seemed the matter was over, and the querulous party had lost and the new helmsman could initiate reconciliation. Professor Salami did not have the opportunity to occupy his new seat. Perhaps more absurd was that the man he was to succeed was not allowed to enjoy his last day in office as an unruly drama of blockade prevented both exit and entrance.

    The dissenters have already taken the matter to court, and the federal ministry of education ordered the dissolution of the governing council and nullified the process it had already anointed.  With no top officer and governing council, classes cannot go on and the university has been in silence

    It is stunning that the federal government could have approved a vice chancellor without examining the process. It is also absurd it nullified its own decision. It is clear that due process was followed in picking Professor Salami. If the SSANU/NASU consensus is not Salami, it does not make the process any flawed.

    If the objectors hate the choice, it was no reason for them to break out in unruly theatre, bearing symbolic coffins and mounting blockade and imposing paralysis in a continuation of a rhythm of closure and opening that has characterised our university system for over a decade.

    The federal ministry has now directed the registrar to ask the deputy vice chancellor to convene a senate session to pick an acting vice chancellor. That will hopefully restore normalcy. The classrooms should soon hum with lecturers and students until the court determines the way forward.

     

  • LASU, OAU shine at moot court contest

    Lagos State University (LASU)  Law Faculty students have won the maiden Gbenga Ojo National Inter-University Moot Court, Counselling and Mock Competition” held last week  at  the institution.

    Adebanjo Fatai and Ayeyemi Taofeek appeared as counsel for Team LASU, while Ehinmosan Olukolade  and Tijani Taofeeq appeared for Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile Ife, Osun State, which came second at the  event.

    At the moot court session presided over by Justice Olugbenga Ogunfowora of the Ogun State High Court,  Team LASU defeated its counterpart from OAU, Ile-Ife.

    Aside from certificates, Team LASU got a N50,000 cash prize, OAU went home with N30, 000.

    Other universities that participated in the three-day programme include Ajayi Crowther University, Bowen University and National Open University ( NOUN).

    In the debate competition, which centered on contemporary issues and topics, such as  “State policing; to be or not to be?”; “Amnesty as a palliative measure to terrorism in Nigeria”; “The need for special courts in the fight against corruption in Nigeria”, OAU came first, ASU came and Ajayi Crowther University came third.  They went away with cash prizes of N30,000, N20,000 and N10,000.

    According to the President of the LASU LSS, Mr Kamilu Abdu-Ganiu, the students decided to honour Ojo because of his, “zeal, drive and determination to encourage the spirit of excellence amongst students.”­

    Also for his contributions to the Legal profession, both at practice and impartation of knowledge.”

    On the  objectives of the programme, Abdul-Ganiu said: “The moot court competition helps to introduce students and budding lawyers to the practical aspect of the study of law, as well as create a healthy rivalry amongst sister Faculties of Law from several institutions.”

    The honoree, Ojo, was given an award which was presented by the Dean, Faculty of Law, LASU, Prof Mike Ikhariale, for his support and contributions to the development of the faculty.