A former Minister of Communication, Major General Tajudeen Olanrewaju, (Rtd), has faulted plans to impose a candidate on the ongoing search for a new vice-chancellor for the Lagos State University (LASU).
He was specific in alleging that the search team would be imposing Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji Bello as the next LASU Vice-Chancellor.
Olanrewaju in a statement on Sunday said that Lagos people were “not going to be buried forever under the burden and yoke of servitude in Lagos State”, which according to him is why all conscionable indigenes of Lagos state should outrightly reject such attempts.
The release read in part, “Tunji Bello was Commissioner at various times, former Secretary to the State Government, even as I write, he is the present Commissioner for Environment. It will good to note this Bello is from Kogi State. Where else in this nation can a non-indigene dominate the public service for this long only because he is close to the tools of power?
Adding, “To rub salt upon injury, his wife who is from Ondo state is being schemed to occupy the position of VIce Chancellor of LASU when there are better qualified professors from Lagos State who have been shortlisted for the position. This is the third time Mrs Bello will be contesting for the position in ten years in an undisguised, very untidy, greedy fixation.”
While stating that it would amount to impunity to impose Ibiyemi Bello on the people, Olanrewaju maintained that other qualified contenders like Professor Olumuyiwa Odusanya, Professor Senapon Bakre, Professor Kabir Akinyemi, and Professor Muyiwa Awofolu shouldn’t be sidelined.
He wondered why Professor Bello was being pushed so recklessly to occupy the Vice Chancellor’s office as if it was some hereditary position in a callous contempt for the indigenes of our State.
He said, “Surely, this is not the vision of Alhaji Lateef Jakande who built the institution more than thirty- five years ago to give the indigenes a quality education and at once give the indigenous professionals a place in the sun.”
“This is no longer the case. Our people are being shoved aside amid a crude and dangerous insensitivity in a new recolonization of Lagos.”
“They are pushing us to the wall. They are treating us with contempt. As a stakeholder and as a committed indigene, I am seriously advising the authorities to move swiftly away from this callous, ill-conceived decision whose untoward implication no one can fathom,” he said.
According to him when former Professor Fatiu Akesode contested for the Vice Chancellorship of Ogun state University many years ago, he was rejected and told to go back home to Lagos State.
Olarenwaju stressed that it was totally unacceptable and unjust to take “what naturally belongs to Lagosians” away one after the other by what he called partisan alien hands.
The former minister added, “While I will continue to encourage merit, fairness in the appointments to public office, I will never stop in the defense and In the protection of the inalienable rights of well qualified native Lagosians whose collective destinies are now being brazenly eroded and trampled upon on their own soil. This is one contempt and insult too many.”
EduCeleb.com understands that the tenure of the incumbent vice-chancellor, Professor Olanrewaju Fagbohun ends in January. His successor is expected to be announced within the days ahead.
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