Over 100 professors who hail from Offa in Kwara State have faulted the selection process on the appointment of a substantive Vice-Chancellor for Kwara State University.
The Offa-born academics under the auspices of Offa Professors Forum, (OPF) in a press statement described ongoing process as jaundiced and inequitable.
According to the statement signed by its Chairman, Prof Hussein Oyelola Bukoye Oloyede, OPF urged Kwara State Governor-Elect, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to put a halt to the current process.
The group urged incoming government to appoint the most senior Deputy Vice Chancellor as Acting VC and then constitute a new equitable Council.
The university in accordance with its Act has set in motion processes that will usher in a successor to the incumbent, Professor Abdulrasheed Na’allah whose tenure expires in July, 2019.
At the close of applications last week, the University Council had set up, beside the statutory Senate-Council Selection Board and the search team, an internal screening committee to specially scrutinize applicants from within the university.
But OPF faulted the selection process, describing it as “skewed and constructed in line with the recent Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union’s (IEDPU) clannish public declaration that it holds the forever-right to KWASU headship because it is sited on the Emirate’s soil”.
OPF said, “With such mindset that is totally antithetical to the universality of a university and the expected academic excellence, the ideals of fair play and equity have been jettisoned for parochial sentiment”.
The group observed that given the kind of the university principal officers, where the Chancellor, Pro-Chancellor, Vice Chancellor and the Acting Registrar are all from Ilorin, it is certain that candidates from the emirate are not only favoured, outsiders will automatically be sidelined.
According to the statement “The Vice Chancellor is replaying an old script of 2009 when the selection committee was dominated by three Ilorin indigenes (Prof Abdulraheem Oba, Late Prof Shehu Jimoh, Alh Bolaji Abdullahi) out of four! The current selection committee with Prof Saka Nuhu (Chairman, Ilorin), Prof Hassan Saliu (Member Council, Ilorin), Prof Abdulrasheed Na Allah (VC, Ilorin), Alh Oba Aluko (Member, Ilorin), Prof Kabir Solihu (Senate Rep, Ilorin) is the height of insensitivity to diversity of Kwara State.”
