The sack of the chairman, vice chairman and 13 other members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities of the Lagos State University (ASUU-LASU) by the institution’s management last Friday may be the beginning of a fresh crisis in the institution. The union has vowed to take the battle further. Members of the university community are polarised over the management’s action, reports ADEGUNLE OLUGBAMILA.
THE academic Staff Union of Universities-Lagos State University (ASUU-LASU) chapter is set for battle with the institution’s management. It is blowing hot five days after the university management kicked out 15 of its members, including its Chairman, Dr. Isaac Akinloye Oyewunmi, and the Vice Chairman, Dr. Adebowale Adeyemi-Suenu.
The union has also complained about their alleged harassment by LASU security officers since their dismissal.
According to a statement signed by the university’s Acting Public Relations Officer (PRO), Ademola Adekoya, the offences of the lecturers and two non-teaching staff, who were sacked last Friday, ranged from demanding bribes, result/grades falsification, doctoring of certificates, defaulting of conditions of their training leave bond, and dishonesty.
While Oyewunmi, a senior lecturer in the Department of Human Kinetics, Sports and Health Education, was accused of demanding a N50,000 bribe from 2003 modular year students of Political Science Education on the sandwich programme, Adeyemi-Suenu, a senior lecturer and Acting Head, Department of History and International Studies, Faculty of Arts, was dismissed for altering the results of 12 students of the department who had already been advised by the university’s Senate to withdraw during the 2015/2016 academic session.
According to the management, Adeyemi-Suenu also got the boot for changing the results of some final year students and stragglers outside the scope of the departmental decision, as well as awarding grade point of 2.0 to two students in an examination they did not sit for.
Oyewunmi’s problems started last October when the management received a one-page petition titled: ‘Save our Soul petition against Dr. Isaac Akinloye Oyewunmi’, and signed by one Abiodun Adebola Jolaosho, that accused the ASUU chairman of using a front to demand N50,000 from Political Science Education students on the Sandwich Programme to process their results.
Oyewunmi denied the allegations. In his response to management, Oyewunmi said the petition was designed to tarnish his image and that of ASUU because of the battle the union fought and won under the immediate past management.
On Thursday, January 5, this year, the university wrote him to appear before a fact-finding panel to clear his name. A month later, the university again wrote him to appear before an investigative panel.
Aside those dismissed, Dr. John Olufemi Adeogun, an Associate Professor, from Oyewunmi’s department, was demoted for ‘acts bordering on dishonesty’.
The non-teaching members of staff affected were: Mr. Emmanuel Baoku Babatunde, a Senior Security Officer, who was demoted for allegedly sabotaging the university’s security operations; and Mr. Ramon Ajose Alli, a former head machine operator, who was sacked for collecting N20,000 to assist a student substitute his falsified result in his personal file with another result.
Adekoya said that the LASU management and Governing Council premised their decision on integrity of the investigative panel as well as statements of the accused who were given a fair hearing.
He said the management would stop at nothing to sanitise the 33-year-old institution.
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