NOUN: Advocacy Group Berates Call For VC Sack

Amidst protest and petition calling for the sack of the Vice-Chancellor of the National Open University, Prof. Vincent Tenebe, a civil rights group, the Africa Centre for Education Rights and Advocacy has urged the Federal government to ignore such calls and rather look into the enviable impact of administrators especially the accused Vice-Chancellor.

In a press statement available to journalists, issued by the Centre’s Regional President, Mr. Abayomi Ogundele, openly condemned the said petition while saying that the students were ignorant of the towering image of the University both at home and abroad in providing quantitative and qualitative education to all seekers of education with ease and flexibility. The statement also stated that the petition was the handiwork of people who were not bona fide students of the institution but hirelings acting under the guise of NOUN student’s congress.

“The centre frowns at the recent behavior of the students acting under the auspices of NOUN Students Congress as jobless persons who were expelled from other Universities in Nigeria and hiding under the non-existing platform to cause confusion and should not be taken seriously at any point in time, insisting that the management has lived above board in the discharge of their duties to both students and the country and should not be distracted at this critical point that President Muhammadu Buhari is out to restore our lost glory”. It stated.

According to them their reason for wading into the matter was because the Centre is an advocacy and enlightenment unit in the educational sector and so it is also aware that the University has maintained the highest level of accountability and transparency both to students and the Federal Government in handling public funds. It thus wondered why these set of students would plan to physically assault the Vice Chancellor and his team and “when caught decided to behave like the average Nigerian politician who uses “persecution” to meander his way out of the consequences”.

Abayomi added that the institution under the present leadership currently hosts highly reputable Nigerians and foreigners alike including former President Olusegun Obasanjo who successfully completed his studies recently and implored the general public to “disregard these charlatans who have refused to acquit themselves with modern technology and ICT innovations that are being deployed by the University for world class learning that have earned them their pride of place on the Africa continent”.
The statement however noted that Nigerians are obviously happy that the University is the bastion of the current change mantra as the first institution to checkmate extortion of students, bribe for high marks, sexual harassment, examination malpractice and cultism which were the hallmark of our institutions of higher learning in recent past and called on the management not to relent but to continue to discharge their duties as Judas are bound to exist in the society irrespective of how much efforts is invested our leaders.