A Civil Society Organisation; the Society for Rule of Law in Nigeria
(SRLN) has called on the National Universities Commission (NUC) to
revisit the accreditation of courses in the Ekiti State University,
Ado Ekiti done in 2016, owing to the sack of the staff recruited by
the university to facilitate accreditation of the courses.
Over 1,000 workers of the university were sacked last year in an
exercise seen as political victimization as the sacked workers were
not employed by the present government of Dr. Kayode Fayemi. The
government had earlier sacked over 2,000 public servants, including
primary and secondary school teachers employed in 2018 by the Ayo
Fayose administration.
According to a statement on Friday, by its Co-coordinator, Dr. Chima
Ubeku, the SRLN said it amounted to “obtaining by fraud for a citadel
of higher education to recruit staff to meet NUC requirements for
accreditation of its courses and later sack the staff after getting
the accreditation and the NUC must not allow this seeming academic
fraud to stand.”
The group said, from its findings, departments like; Science
Laboratory Technology (SLT), Tourism, CRS Education, French Education,
History Education Engineering, Science Education, Mathematics
Education, Integrated Science Education, Biology Education, Social
Science Education and others were accredited by the NUC in April 2016.
The SRLN said since the Ekiti State University had by itself admitted
that the staff used for accreditation of its courses in 2016 were
illegally employed, the accreditation cannot stand because “illegal
staff cannot be used to get legal accreditation.”
“The NUC must not allow Ekiti State University to benefit from the
efforts of workers whose employment it had admitted to be irregular,”
the group added.
Decrying the shortage of lecturers in the university owing to the
sack, SRLN said; “As at today, there is no single lecturer at the
History and International Studies Education, Tourism and SLT
Departments and we wonder how a university can run without lecturers.
Also, what will now happen to all the courses handled by the sacked
lecturers?”
While describing the workers sack as wicked and inhuman, the SRLN said
it was appalling that under Fayemi, who rose to political prominence,
using the ladder of human rights and pro-democracy activism, over
3,000 Ekiti indigenes have lost the jobs that they got under a Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) government.
The group said it was strange that a government of All Progressives
Congress (APC), a party that claimed to be progressives is the one
sending people employed by a PDP government back to the labour market
and we wonder if Dr. Fayemi is aware that power is transient and that
whatever he does today will be history tomorrow.
