NIGERIA: Government in court over ruling councils

The Academic Staff Union of Universities, the ASUU, has dragged the N igerian government before the Federal High Court, challenging as illegal President Shehu Musa Yar'Adua's failure to reconstitute the governing councils of federal universities. All councils were dissolved in 2007 and the lack of the decision-making bodies has hampered university operations. The court action has jolted the presidency which claims to champion the rule of law.

Union lawyer Femi Falana claims in an affidavit that Yar'Adua's failure to reconstitute governing councils is illegal and a clear violation of the Act setting up each federal university. The Nigerian President is by law the 'visitor' of all federal universities.

The ASUU further alleges that failure to reconstitute councils has affected student welfare and the approval of development projects and administrative policies, which are exclusively vested in governing councils.

The federal government dissolved all the boards of federal organisations, including the councils of Nigeria's 27 federal universities, in a circular issued by the office of the Secretary to the Government in October 2007. An official declared the action had been taken in the 'public interest'.

Chairman of the Committee of Pro-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Afe Babalola - a prominent Supreme Court lawyer - wrote to the government saying the dissolution of university councils was illegal.

"It violates the Acts of the affected universities," Babalola argued. He said the term of pro-chancellors and council members was stipulated by statute, the university act of each federal university, and as such should not be terminated by presidential fiat.

Babalola urged the President to issue a clarification letter to the Federal Ministry of Education and the National Universities Commission to avoid erroneous interpretation of the announced dissolution.

Micheal Aondoakaa, Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, agreed with Babalola's submission. He had promised that councils would soon be reconstituted but this did not happen and federal universities have not had councils for 15 months. As a result, vice-chancellors have been running federal universities as sole administrators.

Professor Mike Ihariale, former dean of the law faculty at Lagos State University, said the absence of councils was "reminiscent of how universities were mismanaged during the dark days of the military era".

"Vice-chancellors went cap in hand to the Minister of Education, who personally took very important decisions on behalf of the governing councils. This should not be the case in a democracy," Ihariale lamented.

A major frustration facing federal universities concerns staff appointments and promotions. Each university's appointment and promotion committee, which also deals with the welfare of staff, is a strategic body and a sub-committee of its governing council. Most of its decisions cannot be ratified in the absence of a council.

Meanwhile, the five-year non-renewable terms of some federal university vice-chancellors will soon end and there is an urgent need for councils to establish search committees to select new vice-chancellors.

"The deputy vice-chancellor can be appointed as the acting vice-chancellor," said Sunday Ukpeme, a union leader at the Federal University in Abuja. "Yet the statute establishing these universities is very clear on this issue: only the governing council - in session - has the right to take such a decision."

The Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities has joined the clamour to reconstitute councils. Its public relations officer, Citizen Ekpo, declared that for the federal government "to allow vice-chancellors to run universities as their personal estates" without councils was most unfortunate and an aberration of due process.

Reliable sources say that Yar'Adua has instructed Dr Sam Ekwu, newly-appointed Federal Minister of Education, to come up with a list of new council members of federal universities.

He allegedly disclosed to some members of his 'kitchen cabinet' that one of the reasons why he sacked Baba Gana Gingibe, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, was his inexplicable delay in reconstituting university councils and the boards of government-owned companies.

The same source disclosed that the President, a former chemistry lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, is not happy that his constituency - the university sector - is treated "with disdain" by bureaucrats.

Despite repeated assurances by officials that councils will soon be reconstituted, academics are determined to press on with their High Court case against the government on the issue.