Tella: The Sack Of A Professor And Vice Chancellor

Professor S.A .Tella was until a few months ago the Vice- Chancellor (VC) of Crescent University owned by Prince Bola Ajibola. Ajibola was a one- time Attorney General of Nigeria, a one- time Judge of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, and currently Head of the Elders’ Forum of Ogun State, which impliedly is an advisory body to the Gbenga Daniel-led PDP Govt. of the State.

Tella was forced to resign as VC. In publicizing his resignation, he said  because  he was unable retract and apologize, as demanded by Crescent University over which he was VC, on account of a position he had espoused publicly, he chose the option of resigning. The other option, clearly, was to be fired. In the same statement, he raised the alarm that he was returning to Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) where he has tenure as a Professor but whose Visitor was the same Governor whose displeasure at the opinion he expressed caused his forced resignation from Crescent University. He indicated that he was returning to OOU to face a battle of survival.  The Visitor caused to be issued what turned out to be a tongue in cheek response that he has no hand in staff matters of the University. As Tella predicted, a few weeks on return to OOU, his appointment as tenured Professor of Economics was terminated. The reason given for the termination was the reorganization going on in the public funded State University.

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This is a perfect season for megalomaniac psychopaths in power to commit murder. No one pays attention.  The nation is overwhelmed by the din of political activities such that even matters that are symptomatic and fundamental to the true practice of the democracy are ignored.  In our on- going and characteristic obsession with single issues, we do not seem to realize that we can have free, fair and supposedly credible elections and still put tyrants in power unless all the facet of life on which democratic practice impacts are jealously guarded and continuously monitored. The University system which is expected to be a training ground for democratic practice, if properly run, is itself under perpetual attack and society seems not to care.

The sack of Tella has thrown up a number of issues which bear our reflection. These include the nature of private Universities in Nigeria; the impact of political heads of public Universities; the fulfillment of the raison d’être of universities in practice and in breach.

The private university, in its second coming, has its origin in elite consensus that the only alternative to a dysfunctional public university system is to create private ones. It did not matter to the ruling class that they were, in the first instance, the architect of the ruination of the public universities. For 8 years, the Obasanjo/Atiku Presidency fought instead of building public universities. At the end of, and as a reward of their struggles, Obasanjo established his own university at Otta and Atiku established his at Yola. This elite decision is also deeply ideological. They need isolated institutions called universities where their children can take degrees to the exclusion of the children of the masses. It is a direct continuation of what they had done to the public primary and secondary tiers of education. As it turned out, it is religious groupings (or elite with religious pretensions) and moneyed fraudsters (at the last count, there were over 40 private universities classified as fraudulent by the NUC) that followed the step of the rulers. These universities bear deep study if we are not to rue their existence in the future. But such a study is beyond the scope of this essay. What is relevant here is the over bearing influence of the owners/proprietors of these Universities in clear breach of the ethos and principles of Universities.  In the Tella instance, Prince Ajibola, the owner of Crescent University, cannot appreciate the need to respect and protect the academic freedom of a Vice Chancellor academic that has an opinion which conflicts with that of his (Ajibola’s) benefactor. If he does not know, Prince Ajibola should be told that a University run the way he is running Crescent University will be one only in name and will not be respected outside its conclave. The position he has advertised by the forced resignation of Tella is that none of his lecturers or student can express a dissenting opinion about anything. The university is about expression of ALL opinions which contend and the one with the higher force of logic surviving. Where extraneous forces interfere (Galileo, Martin Luther, Peter Duesberg etc), the clock of civilization is set back.

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The politicians involved in running our universities are the Visitors and nominees of Govt. on Council. The nominees are expected to be men of integrity from society who understand the concept of a University. Unfortunately, our experience in public universities does not bear this out. Such nominees see their presence on Councils as political pay back and not only do the direct biddings but also read the lips of Govt. /Visitor. About Gbenga Daniel, the Visitor of OOU, the less said about him, the better. His record of governance speaks for itself. We could just highlight this by the single instance of his disabling his State’s House of Assembly once he couldn’t control it. His philosophy appears to be to destroy anything that does not agree with him and which he can’t control. In some of his response to a text message campaign by an organization the ‘Intellectuals Without Borders (IWB)’ on the Tella matter, he derided the public asking him to correct himself; and says he is not afraid of the verdict of history. The staying power of our ruling class derives from two factors, they have no shame (a public claim to this factor goes to Obasanjo); and they believe that history (call for accountability now and in the future) is weak or non- existent in Nigeria.

If we can excuse the Visitor and Council for their inherent though unpardonable limitations, what do we say of the Vice-Chancellor of OOU?  Most Vice-Chancellors believe their loyalties should be to the Govts. that appoint them and that they are agents of Govt. on campus. Mercifully, we have exceptions, even in Nigeria (Bababunmi of LASU, Ukoli of DELSU and now Tella of Crescent University), who read their roles correctly of protecting the autonomy, and freedom of the University and giving it integrity and honour. I wonder if Prof. Wale Are Olaitan, the VC of OOU can defend the reason given for the sack of Tella: ‘reorganization’. Tella teaches in the Dept of Economics which currently has a denied accreditation; i.e. it can’t admit students and its graduates are stigmatized. The Dept. has about 700 students and 13 Lecturers. This gives us a ratio of 53 students to one lecturer. The lecturers’ profile is bottom heavy with 10 of them being in the lower rung. Apart from the Professors, only one other lecturer has a PhD. The Dept. has no substantive Head of Dept. There were 3 Professors, One is the Dean, the second is a contract staff on his way out; the third is Tella who has been sacked. How the sack of Tella aids positive reorganization beats the imagination. The mindset of a large number of University Administrations in Nigeria is not what is best for the system but what satisfies their ego and that of their masters.  Academics are sacked mindlessly or thrown into detentions. It has happened at  Ibadan(Ola Oni, Bade Onimode et al.), Lagos(Olaniyan, Ekundayo et al.), Benin (Festus Iyayi et al.), Nsukka (Asobie, Ogban-Iyam et al.), BUK(Attahiru Jega, Aminu et al.), Ife (Olorode, Fashina, Awopetu et al.), FUT,Akure (Esan Aderinola et al.), FUT,Owerri (Eshiet, Onuigboje et al.), Abuja (Owa, Kolawole, Agber et al.),  Ilorin (Oloruntoba-Oju, Oduleye, Akinyanju et al.), OOU (Babarinde et al., and now Tella). The list is endless, indeed at a time the entire academic staff of Nigerian Universities were seacked!

We may quickly look at what Tella said for which he was sacked; though it should not matter what he said. The laws of the country and the responsibility of his profession allow him to voice his opinion on all matters that catch his fancy within the law. In a memo to the State House of Assembly, he made a case against granting of loan opportunity to Gbenga Daniel’s government as follows:

“As an economist, it is imperative to lend my voice to the on-going discussion on the desirability or not of acceding to such request. While I do not object to raising loans to meet developmental obligations by governments or even individuals, I find it ridiculous for anyone to borrow in order to offset an earlier debt. Every loan should count towards investments that will be able to repay the loan in future. Thus, the government should be able to point at what was done with earlier loans and why such projects are not yet bringing out returns to offset such loans. The position of the House that the Government should open its books for evaluation is within the jurisdiction of the House and should continue to insist on this. In fact the Government should publish its audited accounts publicly every year as done by some States government in the present dispensation.  I hereby wish to commend the House on its stand and hope it continues to follow the due process. However, if the Government is able to convince the House on the projects to be invested on (this is likely going to be an afterthought now), the House may reconsider the case after due consultation.”

How Gbenga Daniel, Bola Ajibola, OOU Council and Vice-Chancellor Olaitan can sack an academic staff based on this opinion boggles the mind.
It is time to rally and put a stop to the destruction of academics in Nigeria. The ruling class and their quisling Vice- Chancellors and Councils seem to think that you can run universities without intellectuals. This way we not only remain the laughing stock of the world but our development will remain stunted. 

Poju Akinyanju PhD
Professor of Microbiology
University of Ilorin

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