ASUU Chairman, Abuja chapter, Dr Ben Ugheoke, stressed that the work of the panel could have been better handled by the governing councils of the affected universities.
Affected institutions include; Federal University, Dutsin-Ma (Katsina), Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike (Abia), University of Uyo (Akwa Ibom), Federal University, Kashere (Gombe), University of Abuja.
Others are University of Nigeria Nsukka (Enugu), Federal Polytechnic, Auchi (Edo), Federal Polytechnic, Oko (Anambra), Yaba College of Technology (Lagos) and University of Calabar (Cross River).
According to him, the governing councils have the statutory mandate to investigate such matters, adding that constituting a separate panel was a waste of government’s time and resources.
He said: “We know that they will claim to be fighting corruption through this way, but they can never win the war because you can’t fight corruption and succeed rather they should create an enabling environment that will expose corruption.”
On suggestion that those who wrote a petition against the Vice Chancellor, University of Abuja, were already indicted in the yet-to be released white paper written by the last visitation panel on the university, the ASUU boss maintained that the petition seems to have come mainly from some aggrieved members of the Senior Staff of Nigerian Universities, SSANU.
Ugheoke further added that SSANU’s petition against the present Vice Chancellor, Professor Michael Adikwu, stands to fail because of his performance so far.
A senior staff in the Federal Ministry of Education, who did not want his name mentioned, said the minister’s action was being misconstrued because he had to act quickly on the petitions.
He added that some of the council members where equally petitioned hence it would be wrong for them to handle the matter.
It would be recalled that on December 10, Adamu set up 10 fact finding committees, to look into petitions levelled the 10 tertiary institutions, bothering on irregularities, corruption and immorality.
The committee was mandated to investigate the authenticity of the allegations and proffer solutions in order to enhance stability, promote due process, enhance fairness and also to entrench accountability and transparency to put an end to impunity in the control and management of public resources.
In another development, Chairman of ASUU, University of Jos branch, Dr. Chris Piwuna, has expressed dismay over the inability of the senate and the governing council of the uinstitution to resolve the trade dispute between them eight weeks after it started.
Piwuna, who spoke with newsmen in Jos yesterday, said even, when the lecturers made themselves available for dialogue, the council and senate of the university were only playing the ostrich.
The chairman said they have only met with the authorities four times since the strike started.
According to him, the council members called for a meeting yesterday because the striking lecturers would be meeting today, even as he wondered why the council could summon a meeting less than 24 hours to their own meeting and more so on a Sunday.
Piwuna said they did not honour the invitation because they felt that it was ill-intentioned.
“We are aware that there will be a council meeting tomorrow (today) and so it has come to a shock to us that they were calling us on the eve of their meeting to meet with us. Of course that is why we turned it down because we cannot understand why the sudden meeting and on a Sunday,” he said.
He said even where some concerned individuals and stakeholders had intervened to resolve the issues at stake, the university authorities had been non-challant in addressing the matters in dispute.
“This is eight weeks of industrial action and we are very surprised that this action has taken this long to resolve and it is not because we have made ourselves unavailable to the university authorities or the senate.
“Interestingly, we have met with individuals who are interested in seeing these issues resolved more than we have met with the authorities,” he added.
Piwuna wondered why a university, which is a centre of learning and research, could be closed for a long period of time and those concerned seem to be less concerned about it. “We want to ask this simple question; is the university closed or open? If it is open, why has it taken the university eight weeks to resolve the crisis? The purpose of university is leaning and research and if a university has been closed for eight weeks without any activity, then, we wonder what type of learning environment is this.
“We also want to ask the council chairman why he has not found it fit to meet with him 10 weeks after we made the request. Indeed why we want to meet with him is to intimate to him our problems and intended action. “We are worried about their commitment to the cardinal objective why the university was established.
“Perhaps it is time for the Federal Government to take a second look at the calibre of people they appoint into councils of universities,” Piwuna said.
The lecturers also took the university to task over the disbursement of N1.161bn released to them by the Federal Government.
“We want the council to tell us the template they used in disbursing the N1.161bn that was sent to the university by the Federal Government,” he stressed.
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