THE Chairman, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian statersities (SSANU), Wale Akinremi has canvassed for genuine autonomy for Nigerian Universities so as to retrieve the university system from the jaws of Vice Chancellors.
Akinremi stated this in a widely circulated message, insisting that if universities system are not retrieved from the Vice Chancellors and their contractors cohorts, it portends great danger for the future of universities administration in Nigeria.
He said the Vice Chancellors cohorts are also in the teaching and non-teaching departments of the university and recommended a reduction of the numbers of internal council members and sharing of the remaining numbers equitably with all categories of university workers.
According to him, “the powers of the Vice-Chancellors to create Deputy Vice-Chancellorship, DVC, positions must be removed. In recent times, what they do is to pave way for their stooges to emerge.
“Another step that must be taken is to find means by which the relationship between the Bursars and the Vice-Chancellor is able to become more transparent.
“Councils must ensure that members of staff in the community have access to financial documents. They are public documents and not security documents.
“Councils must reduce the powers of the Senate to create all sorts of Academic Directorates. What they do is to use such positions to settle political debts.
“Again, any non-teaching member of staff that is on CONTISS 15, especially Directors, must be shielded from the powers of the Vice-Chancellor to redeploy. More often than not, they use this to intimidate and harass incorruptible professionals.”
Akinremi added that the annual financial reports must be presented to the congregation for scrutiny and approval.
“Our universities are becoming something else. Government is not the absolute problem.
“Ask state universities how they run their system. Ask them what they receive from their Governors as subvention. Ask them. How much do we receive in ABU, UI, OAU, UNN, UNICAL, UNIPORT every month? Yet, many of these state Universities are paying some of our allowances that the Federal Universities are not paying.
“Forget about the stories that state Universities charge more than Federal Universities. The gap isn’t very much in most instances. Apart from that, big Universities like Zaria, Ibadan and Akoka have more of Postgraduate and Specialised Programmes now. They charge you as if you are studying in Europe! Our Universities deserve genuine reforms,” he stressed.
