CCSG and its storm in a teakettle

The recent big fuss kicked up by a rather dubious Coalition of Civil Society Group (CCSG) last month over the sack of the councils and Vice-Chancellors (VCs) of 13 Federal universities, in particular the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), may have died down somewhat, but it provides one more evidence that in this day and age of the internet perception seems to matter more than reality.

The story itself is by now all too familiar. Early in February the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, announced the sack of the councils and VCs of the 12 universities President Goodluck Jonathan set up in the run-up to the 2011 general elections. The minister also announced the sack of the council and Vice-Chancellor of NOUN and replaced only the Vice-Chancellors of all thirteen universities but left their councils vacant.

Almost immediately the CCSG led a demonstration to the National Assembly and petitioned the legislature over the sack of the VCs, if not the councils. The Education minister’s action, the coalition said in its petition, was a gross violation of the Universities (Miscellaneous) Act No 11 as amended. It also claimed the minister violated the federal character principle of the Nigerian Constitution by his “hasty appointment of friends and cronies in place of those illegally removed from office,” four of them, the coalition said, from Kano State alone.

Since then just about every one who has written about the issue, from pundits and editorial writers to legal experts, seem to agree with the coalition.

Yakubu Mohammed, former deputy chief executive and respected columnist at the rested Newswatch – and himself not exactly an uninterested party as pro-chancellor of one of the affected universities – called the minister’s action in his new back page column in The Guardian (February 19) “an embarrassment” that was “guaranteed to snowball into a major crisis of confidence.”

Mohammed was mild compared to his colleague and chief executive at Newswatch, Ray Ekpu. Ekpu said in a piece in the current edition of The Source newsmagazine that the minister’s action was “an assault on the university system” and it was strange that “a Minister of Education, who is a civilian…and had worked in a profession, Journalism, where rights and the obedience of laws are championed, could commit this illegality and this arbitrariness.”

Some of the editorial writers were even harsher than Ekpu. Those at the New Telegraph (March 3), for example, said in effect that the minister was an ignoramus. He was, they said, “bereft of ideas about the extant laws, rules and regulations, as well as procedures guiding the appointment of Vice-Chancellors to the university, or otherwise, and worse still the ideal of how the university system is governed.”

Not to be outdone, those at The Guardian (March 11) said the minister’s action was “a powerful advertisement of anti-democratic policies, even as its appointment of new ones to replace them is an unabashed display of ignorance.”

His action, the newspaper also said in somewhat fanciful language, “points to a baffling and scandalous situation which academics have called upon themselves; namely, that like the typical Nigerian position-seeker, even the respected academic, who should be a paladin of moral rectitude and the rule of law, is willing to trample the law for personal gains.”

The legal luminary, Chief Afe Babalola, SAN – and himself the founder of a private university in his native Ekiti State – weighed in with his expertise in a two-part piece on his back page column in the Nigerian Tribune (February 18 and 25). Not even the president as visitor to the universities, much less his education minister, the chief said on February 18, but with more restrained language, has the power to sack their councils and vice-chancellors.

With due respect to all the respectable and not-so-respectable critics of the minister and, by extension, of his boss, President Muhammadu Buhari as visitor to all 13 universities, all the fuss they’ve kicked up is merely so much storm in teakettle.

My reason for saying so is simple; the president broke no law because there was no law for him to break. The simple fact, which virtually all the minister’s critics have found convenient not to see, was that the relevant laws they all referred to were never enacted by President Jonathan before he left office last May, five years after he had set up his 12 universities by fiat.

So far the fairest criticism of the minister’s act seems to have come from the editorial writers of Thisday. In their editorial of February 25, they said they agreed with a statement issued by the Secretary General of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Professor Michael Faborode, in which the CVC criticized the sack of its 13 members. In doing so, however, the newspaper drew attention to the fact that it had consistently warned “against most of these federal universities that were established by presidential fiat with no enabling laws and primarily for political reasons.”

Here the rhetorical question Chief Babalola asked in his February 18 intervention in Tribune is instructive and underscores the importance of Thisday’s caveat. “The Question is,” the legal luminary asked, “Has the Visitor the power to dissolve the Council or appoint Vice Chancellor to the university particularly where a University has been established and a Council has been established by law?” The answer, he said unsurprisingly, was an “emphatic NO.”

The alert reader would, however, have noticed his caveat, “…WHERE A UNIVERSITY HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED AND A COUNCIL HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED BY LAW.”  All critics of the minister assumed this was the case when indeed it wasn’t.

The principal law on establishing public universities, the Universities (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act 2010, may have granted our public universities autonomy but the fact, it bears repeating, was that none of the 12 federal universities in question had its council and vice-chancellor appointed by law as well.

Therefore the worst thing the president can be accused of is breaking the spirit, rather than the letter, of the principal law. This, of course, is not a good thing for anyone to do, much less a president. But it is a lesser offence to commit than the legacy he inherited especially since, as visitor, he has, according to experts, the powers to appoint pioneer councils and vice-chancellors of new public universities.

The case of NOUN was, of course, different from those of the other because it’s been in existence since 1983. Perhaps it was for that reason that the CCSG focused on the sack of its VC.

Still, even here the president committed no offence. Indeed he should be praised for trying to correct an illegality by doing what he did.

By the law the 2010 principal law on public universities, the tenure of NOUN’s vice-chancellor, Professor Vincent Tenebe, expired on October 15, 2015. However, in May, ahead of the swearing in of Buhari as president, the council met in rather questionable circumstances and gave him a two-year extension. This was clearly illegal because the law permits all VCs only one term of five years and no extension.

Yet because we are in an age where perception seems to matter more than reality, CCSG had the temerity to accuse government of breaking its own laws. But then given its dubious antecedents this was hardly surprising. For, the same CCSG it was that organized a rally and petitioned the National Assembly in support of Alhaji Abdulrashid Maina who was seriously implicated in the huge pension scandal back in early 2013. The same coalition organized a pro-Moro rally in March 2014 when the public asked for the prosecution of Abba Moro as Interior minister over the immigration staff recruitment stampedes of that year in which 17 people died and many more were injured. Moro has since been standing trial for alleged financial scandal over the debacle.

More recently the coalition went to the defence of the top military brass sacked for allegedly diverting huge funds meant for arms purchase and welfare of their troops in the fight against Boko Haram by accusing Northern Muslim leaders of paying Amnesty International to expose the alleged shenanigans of the service chiefs.

With a credibility like that of the CCSG it was not surprising that it would accuse the minister of education of appointing four of the 13 new VCs from Kano State alone when indeed there was only one – Professor Awwalu Yadudu – who was more than qualified as a university don and a distinguished constitutional lawyer to serve as a VC.

For all the fuss kicked up as a result of the recent sack of the councils and VCs of 13 federal universities, President Buhari breached no law. However, in this day and age when perception seems to matter more than reality, his administration should quickly sign the laws establishing the 12 universities and appoint their councils so that they can get on with the business of exercising their autonomy.