Gives Government 7-day ultimatum to reverse relocation of campus
By Christopher Oji
The host community of the newly approved Lagos State University of Education, Otto/Ijanikin, at the weekend, protested against the relocation of Major faculties from the Otto campus to Epe.
The community has , therefore, given the State government seven-day ultimatum to return to status quo, the courses removed from the main campus or they would shut down the campus.
According to the community, the courses removed from the campus were moved to the LASUED Epe Annex of the institution which has rendered the main campus useless .
The people made the appeal at a protest held at the school to press home their demand.
The protesting community, said that the removal of the courses was an affront to the National University Commission’s directive and disrespect to the community and threatened to shut down the school .
The placard carrying protesters, said some of the courses removed by the state from the main campus to its Epe annex included those run by the College of Humanities Education, College of Science Education, College of Information, Technology Education ,and College of Management and Social Science Education.
Speaking during the protest, the Spokesman of the community, who represented 28 traditional rulers,Chief Dawodu Avoseh, said the courses moved to Epe ,were at the Otto campus as directed by the NUC,but because of politics, the government moved the Curses to Epe.
According Avoseh, those courses that were moved to Epe were the courses that made the school to gain approval following the community’s struggle for the institution to be established in the area in order to drive development in the community.
Avoseh said: “The removal of the major course that gave the university its status to its Epe campus is a disservice to the people that gave out land for the school to be built.The school since they moved the major courses to Ekpe is virtually empty . Wothout those courses, the main campus is useless.
“The community used to benefits from students rents,and their patronage in small scale businesses that we do. Some of us invested in houses which we rented out to the students, but since they moved the courses to Epe,the houses built for students are now empty.
“We are appealing to the state Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to come to our aid as we know such removal was done without his consent.
“We know he is a listening person that is why we are making our demands public so that it would reach him, and we are waiting for his action. We are peace loving people; we don’t want to take laws into our hands that’s why we are making this appeal to the government to order for reversal of the courses back to the main campus.”
Avoseh added that the community had written series of protest letters on the issue to the governor, but regretted that some persons prevented the letters singned by 28 first class traditional rulers from getting to the governor.
He noted that the community had the consent of the Obas in the area to issue a seven-day notice beginning from February 18 to the state, after which the people would shut down the school from operations.
“We want to know what we have done to the state government for us to deserve this punishment. We have been begging the state government to return the courses, we are not happy.
“We have written series of letters to the government about our grievances. We also wrote another letter on the instruction of the Aworis oba to the state government and the letters didn’t see the light of the day. The courses should be reverse back, we want to partake in the governing council of the school also.
“We are also demanding for 40 percent in employment, and the school fee. We want the government to put us into consideration in whatever they want to do. We don’t want our children to suffer. We don’t have source of income all we depend on is just the house rent the students are paying through accommodation . We have no Market or any other business, apart from the house rent and the things that the students buy from us and that’s the reason we are pained.
” We are by this protest, warning the government to either accede to our requests or risk our wrath. We have given the government a seven day ultimatum, failure to heed to our pleas, we shall shut down the school to know that we no longer have a School. We are not joking and we mean business. We are not making empty threat ,we will shut down the school and we are ready to defend our land and community,*