Fashola: Sacking LASU VC Not Priority

Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State has said that sacking the Vice Chancellor of the Lagos State University, LASU, Prof. Lateef Hussain, was not government’s priority.

The State House of Assembly had asked him to sack the embattled Vice Chancellor, following allegations of highhandedness and misappropriation of funds levelled against him by lecturers at the institution.

Fashola said the first thing to be addressed was the interest of the students, following the de-acreditation of several courses offered by the institution by the National Universities Commission, NUC.

“The most important thing is to find out why the accreditation has been suspended because it could encompass a combination of human capacity, lecturer capacity and even availability. These are things to be checked and see if it can be remedied in the short term and where it came from,” said Fashola.

The governor spoke in an interview with newsmen after delivering the 4th Lateef Femi Okunnu Annual Lecture with the theme, Democratic Consolidation and Good Governance in Nigeria- Myth or Reality at the Oduduwa Hall of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Osun State, South West Nigeria.

According to the governor, the House of Assembly, as the representatives of the people should expectedly be concerned about the development, adding that what had gone wrong is what should first be examined.

Also, the governor gave assurance that the accreditation issue at LASU would not affect the course of the development of the students who were in the university, adding that the students were admitted lawfully with valid accreditation.

He reassured the parents that the students would have no problem with the issue on ground, explaining that he once had a similar experience when he was still a student at the University of Benin when the NUC threatened to withdraw the accreditation of the law faculty of the University because the institution did not have the required number of professors.

Fashola said added that it was rather ironic that his set from the Law faculty of the University of Benin recorded the best result at that year’s Nigerian Law school examination.

He stated that it was the commitment of the lecturers to teaching rather than the title they held that mattered.

The governor shed more light on the accreditation issue, described it as a simple system check by the regulator of the university system, noting that with the present exercise, what NUC was doing was to check the accreditation which it had earlier given.

According to him, it was not something to lose sleep over as it was designed to ensure that the required quality for the programme in the university was met.

“We should also ask ourselves what standard the National Universities Commission set for Nigerian universities. Are they uniform? Are they being fairly applied and have they been well handled?

“Other questions are: who has applied the rules? Is it properly applied? Who was at fault, is it the Government, the institution, the Governing Council or all of us?”

—Kazeem Ugbodaga