Well-meaning Nigerians were justifiably aghast at the decision of the Ekiti State Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, to sack over 1000 workers of the Ekiti State University, EKSU, Ado Ekiti, especially now that the country is almost drowning in the ocean of unemployment.
This is even more troubling when viewed against the background of the fact that most of the sacked staff were recruited to bolster the effort of the state government to facilitate accreditation of some courses offered by EKSU, by the National Universities Commission, NUC, done in 2016.
The sack exercise is widely viewed as political victimization given that the workers disengaged by the government were not employed the present administration. The government had earlier sacked over 2,000 public servants, including primary, secondary school teachers employed in 2018 by the Ayo Fayose administration.
Clearly, it is fraudulent for a citadel of learning to recruit staff solely for the purpose of meeting NUC requirements for Accreditation of its courses and later sack the staff after getting the accreditation. The NUC must not allow this seeming academic fraud to stand.
Departments like Science Laboratory Technology (SLT), Tourism, Christian Religious Studies (Education), French Education, History Education Engineering, Science Education, Mathematics Education, Integrated Science Education, Biology Education, Social Science Education and others were accredited by the NUC in April 2016
Given that Ekiti State University had by itself admitted that the staff used for accreditation of its courses in 2016 were illegally employed. The accreditation cannot stand because illegal staff cannot be used to get legal accreditation.
The NUC must not allow Ekiti State University to benefit from the efforts of workers whose employment it had admitted to be irregular.
As at today, there is no single lecturer at the History and International Studies Education, Tourism and SLT Departments and we wonder how a university can run without lecturers. Also, what will now happen to all the courses handled by the sacked lecturers? The sacking of the lecturers is wicked, inhuman and appalling.
• Dr. Chima Ubeku, National Coordinator, Society for Rule of Law in Nigeria (SRLN), wrote via email.
