University governing council appointments and federal character application

BY CHINEDU UGWU

On May 9, the minister of education inaugurated the governing councils of 23 federal universities appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari. The governing council are responsible for approving the financial guidelines of the universities; determining the terms and conditions of appointment of the vice-chancellors and principal officers of the universities as well as annually reviewing the universities’ budget to monitor their performance and assess the overall impact of their implementation, among others.

The minister stated that the president made these appointments with respect to the following requirements: a minimum of a university degree, high integrity, and commitment to educational development of the country, geopolitical and federal character consideration to foster a sense of belonging.

The office of my citizen decided to interrogate these appointments and see how federal character and sense of belonging is reflected. There are 40 federal universities in Nigeria. I was able to look at the governing council of 38 excluding Nigeria police academy and Nigeria defence academy.  Federal university, Dutse, Jigawa has members with no chairman. There are 37 council chairmen and 165 members. Out of 165 members, I identified the state of origin for 141 members and geopolitical zones for 151 members. 14 members could not be identified based on either state of origin or geopolitical zones.

The results showed that south-west had the highest number of council chairmen (10) and south-south had the least. North-west had the highest number of council members and north central had the least. In total, north-west and south-west had the most numbers of council chairmen and members while south-south and south-east had the least. Ideally, each geopolitical zone should have at least 4 council chairmen and 25 members if distributed evenly.

At the state level, there should be at least 5 appointments from each state including the FCT.  Borno state, top the list with 10 members. The only southeastern state that had an above average number of appointments is Imo state with 7 appointments. Similarly, south-south had Bayelsa with 5 appointments.

What is common among the states at the top of the table and those below?

I found out that most states with more than average appointments are ruled by All progressive congress party (APC) while those with the least appointments are from the opposition parties (PDP, APGA). Similarly, the regions with the least appointments are affected by one restiveness or the other such as those clamouring for secession (Biafra) or resource control (Niger delta avengers). The states affected by Boko haram terrorism such as Borno, Kaduna etc had more appointments possibly because they are connected to the ruling party, APC.

Having looked at the data, the office of my citizen will leave you with these few questions:

Does this reflect federal character application and sense of belonging?

Does it mean that there are no accomplished people from the states or region with least appointments that meet the criteria?

Do you ever wonder after almost four decades of civil war, people still agitate for secession? These lopsided appointments and other injustice fuels and sustain these agitations. Most of the young people clamouring for Biafra were very young or either not born during the civil war. Though the war has ended, these injustices stayed and stairs at our everyday life. The federal character principle was introduced to cater for our varying ethnic, cultural and religious differences. We will be better as a nation if our appointments reflect this principle of fairness, responsibility and equity.

From the office of my citizen.

Ugwu is a PhD candidate in veterinary science, University of Cambridge, UK