The last has not been heard about the removal of Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe as Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos by its then Governing Council, and his recent reinstatement by the Federal government after an investigative panel.
A group known as Concerned Alumni of the University of Lagos (UNILAG for Good), has now written an open letter to the Minster of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu on the Ogundipe saga, demanding answers to a series of questions.
In the open letter, signed by its leader, Professor Boniface Oye-Adeniran, the group asked why the Minister setup an “inappropriate panel” to investigate the removal of Ogundipe as VC by the Governing council, and designed the terms of reference to allegedly favour Ogundipe.
Oye-Adeniran, a retired Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, University of Lagos and also a Past National President, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA, in the letter also asked the Minister why he desolved “a brilliant, purposeful and selfless body of external members of Governing
Council of the University of Lagos” headed by Dr. B. O. Babalakin.
Referrring to some portions of a letter written to the Minister by Professor Tukur Saad, Chairman of the Special Visitation Panel set up by the federal government to investigate the UNILAG crisis, the group argued that the panel “was clearly and openly one-sided”
The group quoted the panel chairman, Professor Saad, in his letter of October 7, 2020 to the Minister as saying “When you read the Report, you will notice that it was very one-sided so to speak, the option was for the Chairman to refuse to sign the report and would have been a slap on the Government’s face.”
The group further quoted the Chairman as saying in the letter: “There are a number of memoranda sympathetic to the Chairman (of the Governing Council) for the good work he was doing and for his being above board when it came to financial probity, but this did not show up in the report because, it appears three of the ToR (Terms of Reference) were targetted at the Chairman in his role of removing a VC and appointing an Ag VC. These other positive sides of him and the Council did not feature (in the panel’s Recommendations)”.
UNILAG for Good also asked Malam Adamu to explain why he removed “an outstanding Governing Council to support a Management that
has engaged in contract splitting which is a crime under Sections 20(e) and 58(3)(d) of the Procurement Act?”.
To back this allegation up, the group again quoted Professor Saad, in his letter to the Minister thus: “Take the issue of splitting of contracts so that the figures would be within his approval limits; in the renovation of his house and that of some Principal officers the evidence was clear, one Contractor would be given four contracts on the same subject on the same day each packaged to be within VCs approval limit.”
In the light of this, UNILAG for Good stated: “Honourable Minister, this sort of criminal action should not occur in any decent society much less a University. Is this the sort of University that the Ministry of Education wants?
“The Panel also saw Evidence of frivolous expenditure
which was one of the reasons why Professor Oluwatoyin
Ogundipe was removed from office. According to the Chairman:’On the issue of frivolous expenditure at the expense of the core mandate of the University, teaching and research, within the period in question VC and his cronies undertook 75 external trips costing hundreds of millions of Naira, while the total annual DTLC of all the Departments of the University was just N35million per annum.'”
Lastly, while describing Chairman of the Visitation Panel, Professor Saad as an outstanding, forthright and God-fearing person, the group asked the Minister to explain how assembled other members of the panel who they accused of covering up numerous crimes of the Management of University of Lagos under Prof. Toyin Ogundipe
