THE recent intervention by one Professor Toba Alabi on the leadership crisis that has afflicted the University of Abuja over the past one year has not only spectacularly failed to come to grips with the imposed situation at the beleaguered institution, but it has also exposed an intellectual grappling with shallow generalised narratives, as opposed to the concrete, even if, inconvenient facts of the matter. Preferring to play to the gallery rather than situate the crisis at its well-known root, Professor Alabi, throughout his evasive intervention, grotesquely disregarded the subversion of the university’s governing laws and autonomy, as well as the government’s role in orchestrating the ongoing leadership conundrum.
The agitations and cacophony of noise by those who lost out in the race that produced Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi as the 7th substantive Vice-Chancellor did not, on all counts, warrant the unilateral actions taken by the government against the legitimate and properly constituted governing authorities of the University in February last year. However, in his piece entitled “Today in History.
The Sack of the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Abuja and University Administration in Nigeria”, Professor Alabi opted to generalise the issues in terms of systemic governance crisis while conspicuously disregarding the atrocious specificity of the university’s current situation engendered by impunity and executive overreach of the government, its agencies, and actors.
Incontestably, there is nothing general or common about a 21st-century university in Nigeria, or anywhere in the world, being saddled with four vice-chancellors and one uncommon ‘consultant vice-chancellor’ within one year, and still grappling with chronic leadership instability. It was unprecedented, avoidable, and uncalled for. Hence, the pontification by Professor Alabi and his ilk will only obfuscate the happenings at the University of Abuja and further obstruct a proper rule-based resolution of the leadership conundrum.
This should not be accepted by all conscientious stakeholders, especially the hard and worst-hit members of the University of Abuja community. According to Sheikh Uthman Ibn Fodio, the 19th-century Sokoto Islamic jihadist, conscience is an open wound; only truth will heal.
Deployment of False Narrative of Faulty Selection Process
Alabi introduced his write-up and attempted to explain the unlawful removal of Professor Aisha Maikudi and the premature dissolution of the 10th University of Abuja Governing Council, by making outlandish claims such as “the official explanation for the decision points to irregularities in the selection process that led to her appointment…”. This is sheer fabrication by Alabi because no such explanation has emanated from the government to date.
The official statements announcing these drastic measures, issued by both the Presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, and the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, have been in the public domain and accessible. In addition, the government has been unable to serve Professor Maikudi with a disengagement letter that could have explained her removal from office. Hence, as it stands today, contrary to Alabi’s postulation, official reason(s) or explanation for the unilateral actions rooted in the law and due process do not exist.
Even those who raised unfounded allegations and escalated their agitations beyond the confines of the university following Professor Maikudi’s appointment have been exposed and compelled to reverse themselves by the force of law and the imperative of opportunism. The major allegations by the internal antagonists against Maikudi’s appointment were that she did not meet the so-called ten-year professorial requirement and that the Council had usurped the power of the Joint Council and Senate Selection Board in selecting and shortlisting eligible candidates for interview.
However, it is established that the 10-year professorial requirement is not a prescription of any governing law of the system, and several universities have continued to appoint their vice-chancellors without adherence to it. In any case this was not part of the advertised requirements by the Governing Council for the position. In furtherance of this trend, and as this piece is being written, the news just broke of the appointment of an American-minted ‘Associate Professor’ as the new substantive vice-chancellor of the Federal University, Wukari, in Taraba state. An Associate Professor in the USA corresponds to a Lecturer 1 in Nigeria, who should be down in the pecking order and not eligible to contest for the office!
Furthermore, the principal dramatis personae involved in antagonising the 10th Council’s shortlisting of candidates, particularly Professor K. M. Waziri of the Faculty of Law and representative of Senate on the Selection Board, acquiesced and participated in the controversial appointment of the current eligibility-challenged vice-chancellor, Professor Hakeem Fawehinmi, long after the 11th Council had similarly shortlisted interview candidates with neither the constitution nor participation of the Joint Council and Senate Selection Board. There was no whimper against the process this time around, underscoring that their opposition to Maikudi’s appointment was merely contrived to truncate it and subsequently appropriate the process anew.
The opportunism in the dethronement of Professor Maikudi was clear. The turn of events at the University of Abuja has been proving so. More of those who served in the opposition trenches against Maikudi, especially Waziri and his fellow travellers, are being rewarded accordingly. Professor Waziri is now the brand-new Dean of the Postgraduate School, and his fellow Senate Representative on the last Selection Board, Professor Gboyega Kolawole of the Department of English and Literary Studies, is appointed as the new Chairman of the University’s Procurement Planning Committee.
The new Deputy Vice-Chancellors, Academic and Administration, Professors Rosemary Udeozor and Muhammad Ndagi, respectively, also belong in the same camp. Other than this singular reason, with one being a well-known truant and the other a legendary mischief-and-conflict merchant whose exploits also currently manifest in the ongoing crisis ravaging a major religious national agency, they are not better than the so-called senior special assistants they have replaced in the hitherto opaque governance and administrative architecture of the institution.
Rationalising the Institutional Instability
Another inept generalisation by Alabi on the current University of Abuja situation reads, in extenso, thus: “The instability is not an isolated incident but rather part of a long-standing trend at the university, marked by frequent leadership changes and disruption of academic activities. Over the years, the University of Abuja has experienced a high turnover of Vice-Chancellors, which has often hindered the implementation of long-term strategic plans. This administrative instability leads to a lack of continuity, with each new leadership team often starting from scratch, unable to build on the progress of their predecessors.”
Anyone familiar with the history and developmental trajectory of the University of Abuja would be amazed by Alabi’s shallow attempt to equate the events from February 2025 to date with its overall leadership trajectory. Since its inception in 1988 to January 2025, the institution was administered by six substantive vice-chancellors and three acting vice-chancellors who midwifed leadership transitions at various intervals. All the substantive vice-chancellors served their tenures within the limits allowed by law, including the pioneer vice-chancellor, Professor Isa B. Mohammed, who enjoyed two terms permitted by law under the military dispensation.
Accordingly, contrary to Alabi’s assertions, there was no evidence of “frequent leadership changes” warranting “a high turnover of vice-chancellors” in 33 of the university’s 34 years of existence. The rupture in the university’s tenure-bound leadership transition occurred only in the last year, following the precipitous, unilateral interference by the Tinubu administration in the institution’s governance and affairs. This development has not only engendered the ongoing deepening crisis, but it has also culminated in the unprecedented appointment of four vice-chancellors for the university in just one year.
After failing to underline undue external interference, it is also curious that Alabi would further generalise the resultant inglorious situation by claiming that “the University of Abuja reflects the many crises that plague Nigerian universities”. There is no Nigerian university that has ever been reduced to a ‘conquered entity’, especially in this autonomy-driven era, as is the University of Abuja presently under a supposedly civil-democratic regime. Instructively, even in the actions taken against various universities, it is evident that the Tinubu regime has lost the plot and has willy-nilly pushed the University of Abuja to its lowest ebb, with increasingly unenviable peculiarities.
Disregarding the Specificities
It is in the foregoing context that Alabi’s attempt to generalise and normalise the ongoing crisis at the University of Abuja smacks of intellectual dishonesty. Attempting to underscore and situate the internal contestation against Professor Maikudi within the usual prevailing primordial undercurrent also falls flat because the leading protagonist, who deployed enormous financial resources and mobilised the so-called G44 members of the University Senate after losing the position, Professor Sani Mashi, hails from the same Katsina state as Maikudi. Which, contrary to Alabi’s contention, renders primordial sentiments implausible as a causative factor, whether in Maikudi’s appointment or the internal agitations to thwart it.
Of course, the primordial sentiments may have only played a part in both her eventual removal from the office and the refusal to reinstate her to date. Recall that on 6th February 2025, the Federal Government announced the removal of vice-chancellors and dissolution of Governing Councils of some universities, including the University of Abuja. The others affected by the unprecedented leadership changes are the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, the University of Health Sciences, Oturkpo; the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; the Federal University of Lokoja, and the Alvan Ikoku Federal University of Education, Owerri.
However, the University of Abuja has been the hardest hit by the government’s drastic unilateral actions. It is the only university that the entire Governing Council (including the internal members appointed by the University Senate and Congregation) was dissolved, and it has also suffered the indignity of having two successive imposed acting vice-chancellors preside over its affairs. Contrary to existing laws, Professor Patricia Manko Lar from the University of Jos and Professor Mathew Adamu from the Joseph Sarwuan University of Agriculture, Makurdi, were illegally appointed by the government as successive acting vice-chancellors for six and three months, respectively.
For a greater part of Professor Lar’s term in office, the new Pro-Chancellor, Senator Lanre Tejuoso had operated as a ‘one-man’ Governing Council of the University during which the laid-down governance and management structure and ethos were disrupted and bastardised with iniquities, including the creation and appointment of strange ‘senior special assistants’ to the vice-chancellor in place of the statutory recognised deputy vice-chancellors.
Despite the intervention by the National Assembly through its relevant committees and advocacy of well-meaning Nigerians, the two-man leadership contraption was sustained by the government, even as the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, later reinstated Professor Stella Ngozi Lemchi, Vice-Chancellor of Alvan Ikoku Federal University of Education, Owerri, who was sacked at the same time and under similar circumstances as Professor Aisha Maikudi.
Strangely enough, while Minister Alausa instituted an investigation panel in respect of Lemchi, whose appointment met the eligibility requirements for her reinstatement, he has, to date, failed to extend similar due process gestures to Professor Maikudi and the University of Abuja. This is curious, considering that Maikudi, a Hausa-Fulani from the North-West, was appointed vice-chancellor four years after becoming a professor. However, Lemchi from the South-East was appointed vice-chancellor only one year after becoming a professor. This raises the question whether, in a federation like Nigeria, what is good for the goose should not be good for the gander!
At the same time, it beats one’s imagination that the government reappointed the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the 10th Governing Council, Air Vice Marshal Sadiq Kaita, and the other external members, who appointed Professor Maikudi to the Councils of other universities. But it has refused to reinstate her and the deposed internal members. These arbitrary, inelegant actions of the government at once exonerated the 10th Council of wrongdoing and validated Maikudi’s appointment, yet it has remained impervious. As the lawyers would say, one cannot approbate and reprobate at the same time.
Arising from the foregoing, and by the government sticking to its guns, the university proceeded to conduct a new selection process, which culminated in the controversial appointment of a substantive vice-chancellor without the advertised requisite academic qualification (PhD). To crown the leadership dance of the absurd at the university, Professor Hakeem Fawehinmi, the new helmsman who was billed to assume office on 10th February 2026, stampeded it forward to 10th November 2025, two months ahead of schedule. This was engineered to contain the crisis over his ineligibility for the position, for which a court order was allegedly being processed to block his assumption of office.
Consequently, Professor Mathew Adamu, whose tenure as acting vice-chancellor was earlier renewed for another three months by the Council, had to be abruptly relieved of the office to accommodate Professor Fawehinmi’s start of controversial tenure. For the suddenly dislodged nonplussed Professor Adamu, the Council clumsily retained him as a consultant, by which they jointly presided over affairs with the new substantive vice-chancellor for the remainder of his tenure at the University. What a contrived, embarrassing quagmire!
Subverting University Autonomy
The greatest casualty arising from the impunity and executive overreach of the Tinubu Presidency, which Alabi has not deemed necessary to highlight, is the contemptuous usurpation of university autonomy. By suddenly uprooting the entire leadership of the University of Abuja in February last year, the government not only made mincemeat of the institution’s governing laws but also diminished its capacity to reproduce quality leadership on a sustainable basis in conformity with global best practices. The hard-fought, legally earned self-governing status of the federal universities is not meant to be whimsically breached and trampled upon.
Rather than pointing out the dangers posed by the high-handed arbitrariness of the apparatchiks of the current administration, as represented by Minister Tunji Alausa, Professor Alabi seems at home advancing a justification. In his words: “The sacking of Vice-Chancellors and the restructuring of governing councils may be seen as attempts to promote accountability, but they also serve as a critical reminder of the need for comprehensive reform within the university system.”
Alabi is mistaken about the need for reform instead of the imperative of full adherence to existing rules of engagement.
Going by the provisions of existing laws, specifically the Universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Act 2003, No. 1 of 2007, otherwise called the Universities Autonomy Act, the governing councils of universities shall have a tenure of four years from the date of their inauguration and can only be prematurely dissolved on grounds of incompetence and corruption. In the same vein, the vice-chancellor is appointed by the Governing Council and may be removed from office by only the Council on clearly specified grounds after due process.
For any such scenario, the Act provides under Section 5, Subsection (12) “There shall be no sole administration in any Nigerian University” and Subsection (13) “In any case of a vacancy in the office of the Vice-Chancellor, the Council shall appoint an acting Vice-Chancellor on recommendation of the Senate.”
The University of Abuja has, in the last year, suffered the erosion of its autonomy and continuous breach of its governing laws. Nowhere in the laws is carte blanche provided for external interference in the constitution or removal of the governing authorities of universities. Even the premature dissolution of its 10th Governing Council, barely seven months into its four-year tenure, was not grounded in the law and due process. This is not to talk of the removal of Professor Maikudi and internal members of the 10th Council appointed by the University Senate and Congregation, as well as the appointment of acting vice-chancellors, all of which are not within the purview of any external body, be it the Visitor or the government.
Given the attendant crisis at the University of Abuja, it is a categorical imperative for all conscientious stakeholders in the Nigerian academia to oppose and reject any subjugation and micro-management of the universities by government forces. Such imposition is not only unlawful and crisis-prone, but also antithetical to global best practices and institutional transformation and progress. It is for this singular reason that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) must forcefully join the fray to repel the pugnacious attempt to reintroduce the spectre of sole administrators in Nigerian universities via the increasing appointment of acting vice-chancellors by the government at the initiative of the Minister of Education.
The Union has failed by its indifference and or lame approach to the University of Abuja saga, which has clearly emboldened the government to appoint acting vice-chancellors for other universities outside the law. This unbecoming development must be nipped in the bud before it escalates. ASUU must rise to the occasion, now that university autonomy has been reinforced in the 2025 FGN-ASUU renegotiated agreement.
Deepening Conundrum and the Inevitability of Returning to Rules
It is profoundly sad that the University of Abuja has remained in the limelight for all the wrong reasons since February 2025. What could pass for a routine transition to a new leadership in the institution was challenged by internal forces who lost out in the race and were disappointed by the outcome that their younger emerged victorious. Their escalating agitation against Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi’s appointment prompted some vested interests in the Tinubu administration, led by Dr. Alausa, to throw both the newly appointed Vice-Chancellor and the Governing Council under the bus, to hijack the governance and management of the University outside the law.
It was unprecedented and uncalled for. It is an open secret that the University had, during the appointment of the 5th substantive Vice-Chancellor, Professor Michael Adikwu, witnessed a similar transition crisis, which the successive Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari administrations had the grace to allow the institution to sort its internal power dynamics within the ambit of the law and forge ahead. However, today the university is in a deep conundrum, with a tentative, eligibility-challenged academic at the helm of affairs, whose supporters and appointees are desperately seeking reconciliation and cooperation of major stakeholders in the system.
Even at that, the political sore wound inflicted by the gangster-like uprooting of the properly constituted governing authorities of the University has remained an albatross around its neck. This has not been helped by the two imposed acting vice-chancellors, who managed affairs without accountability to internal stakeholders, preferring to ride roughshod over members of the community and the institution’s procedures, processes, and practices.
The prevailing predicament in the university community has been compounded not only by the unwholesome genesis and circumstances of Professor Hakeem Babatunde Fawehinmi’s emergence as the 8th substantive Vice-Chancellor of the University. The optics of a dislodged precocious and beautiful, Muslim, Hausa-Fulani academic of northern extraction being replaced by a Yoruba Christian academic and pastor from the South-West also confronts, demeans, and dishonours Fawehinmi as a placeholder and his sponsors as interlopers.
As things stand today, there is only one viable way out of the lingering leadership quagmire at the University of Abuja. Neither playing the ‘proverbial ostrich’ by the sponsors of Professor Fawehinmi, nor inept generalisation-cum-rationalisation by academics like Professor Alabi, stands any chance of salvaging the institution from the current leadership perdition. What is required is simply full compliance with the institution’s rules of engagement.
- Omeiza, PhD, is with the Abuja Leadership Centre, University of Abuja.