From:Femi Oyelola in Kaduna
A Federal University is not the fiefdom of an individual, an ethnic bloc, or a transient governing circle. It is a national asset, built with collective resources, sustained by public trust, and mandated to serve the highest ideals of merit, fairness, diversity, and intellectual excellence.
When credible concerns arise that these ideals may have been subordinated to ethnic loyalty and political calculation, silence becomes complicity.
This is why the allegations surrounding the leadership years of Professor Olayemi Akinwumi, the outgoing Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Lokoja, deserve sober, principled, and nationalistic reflection, writes Prof Olayemi Akinwunmi.
At the heart of these concerns is a troubling pattern that, if formally established by proper inquiry, would represent a serious departure from the spirit and letter of Nigeria’s university governance framework.
Reports and internal accounts suggest that, over the past five years and particularly during the most recent general recruitment exercise, a disproportionate number of replacement and new positions were allegedly filled with candidates of the same ethnic extraction as the Vice Chancellor.
Equally alarming are claims that throughout Prof Akinwumi’s tenure, some individuals, mostly from his ethnic group, were allegedly appointed into the professorial cadre and other cadres without the requisite university teaching experience and other requirements, while others were elevated from visiting or adjunct status to Professors without full compliance with laid-down procedures. Such actions amount to an assault on academic standards and due process.
The reported manipulation of the system did not stop at appointments. There are concerns that some newly elevated academics from ethnic group, were rapidly positioned as Heads of Departments and Deans, thereby becoming statutory members of Senate.
This, critics argue, effectively reshaped the Senate, not as a collegial body of independent scholars, but as an ethnically and politically aligned bloc.
Perhaps the most painful dimension of this controversy is the alleged marginalization of more qualified candidates from other ethnic groups, even in Kogi state.
Federal University Lokoja, like all federal institutions, was established to reflect Nigeria’s diversity and to promote national integration.
Accounts of long-serving part-time lecturers and other staff from other ethnic groups in the state, who reportedly laboured for over a year under very low remuneration, sustained by the promise of permanent and pensionable employment, being overlooked in favour of less qualified candidates, who did not even attend the recruitment interview, strike at the core of equity and fairness.
There are as bad, if not worse than the alleged commercialization, politization and bastardization of honorary degrees and awards of higher degrees to unworthy influential candidates through a study centre, the so called institute, in Abuja.
This is not, and must never be framed as, an indictment of the VC’s people or any ethnic group. Nigeria’s tragedy has never been diversity itself, but the repeated weaponization of diversity by elites who confuse representation with domination. Ethnic patronage, wherever it occurs and whoever practices it, is corrosive.
Universities are incubators of the future; training teachers, scientists, administrators, and leaders. When recruitment and promotion are distorted, the quality of graduates decline, research credibility suffers, and international reputation erodes.
As Nigerians, we must insist that leadership in our public institutions be judged not by sentiment or silence, but by adherence to law and ethical standards.
If the actions attributed to the outgoing Vice Chancellor, Prof Olayemi Akinwumi, are substantiated, then they represent a bad legacy, one that future administrations must consciously dismantle.
True patriotism is not the defence of individuals; it is the defence of systems that work for all. A federal university must belong to every Nigerian child with talent and ambition, regardless of name, tongue, or place of birth. Anything less is an affront to national unity and an obstacle to development.
