₦airaland Forum

The LASU community was shocked to see newspaper publications on Friday 12th March, 2021 about a group of Professors who call themselves the “Liberators” granting a press conference alongside the renegade impostors ASUU-LASU Executives who are themselves unknown to the National body of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
No one needs to teleguide the Governor of Lagos State & Visitor to Lagos State University on who to appoint as the 9th substantive Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University. It is the Governor’s constitutional right to use his discretion in appointing anyone he deems fit to become the Vice-Chancellor.
What is most baffling about the press conference is the calibre of Professors who addressed it? Prof. Adeleke Fakoya, the Coordinator of the Liberators, is an established plagiarist. Research has revealed how he got involved in plagiarism and academic fraud. Research findings show up to 93% plagiarized input in one of his published texts, Resources on Linguistics (2004) before he was promoted to the position of Professor in 2013.

Prof. Abiodun Akinpelu is not new to scandals in LASU. Akinpelu who has not attended classes to teach students in the last 5 years in LASU lied about a work experience at the University of Ilorin which led to his direct employment to Lecturer I in LASU. The discovery of this fraud resulted in his facing the University’s Senior Staff Disciplinary Committee for several years. The matter was dropped at the intervention of some eminent people. Akinpelu also had a scandalous affair with a female staff of the Faculty of Education. Threats and bullying were involved in the matter.

It is not surprising that Fakoya and Akinpelu fronted the press conference. They are both Fagbohun-Ninalowo errand boys. They have been covered up severally by Fagbohun as agents of the last University administration. Despite repeated letters to Fagbohun about the level of academic fraud and plagiarism perpetrated by Fakoya, Fagbohun deliberately ignored this wrongdoing and merely looked the other way. It is therefore not surprising that these people would want a continuation of the Fagbohun-Ninalowo agenda by dictating to the Governor what he is constitutionally empowered to do.

These “Liberators” are the dark agents of LASU. Their intention is to continue to keep LASU Staff in perpetual and constant fear that occurred throughout the Fagbohun Led-administration’s supposed “peace” of the graveyard. LASU cannot continue to condone the primitive concealment of their incompetence and wickedness. It is high time that LASU cleaned up its dark agents.

One of the greatest strength of the outgoing Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun, Lagos State University is his strategy in maximizing the frenzy of the media to his advantage. Fagbohun turns every LASU activity into media publicity in order to turn the public attention away from his weaknesses. With his media publicity, you would assume that a footstep into the Ojo campus of the institution takes you into El dorado. It appears that people who are close to Fagbohun know how to stroke his ego to make him feel good about himself generally because of what they want from him. Fagbohun is a demagogue who likes to be worshipped. This is why he awards contracts to his friends who are members of staff and accelerates the promotion of his cronies.

Prof. Fagbohun has been adjudged to have done generally well in bringing the institution to the attention of the public. LASU has been rated peaceful in the last five years because Fagbohun crushed all dissenting voices that are statutorily required to check his actions and inactions. There have been several media reports about how he sacked five executive members of ASUU-LASU with the ultimate enablement of the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council, Prof. Adebayo Ninalowo. These concerned academic members of staff were sacked on the basis of their whistleblowing activities of Fagbohun’s year of Professorial appointment which made him ineligible to be appointed as the Vice-Chancellor. The peace of the graveyard that LASU currently displays is because of the fear that Fagbohun has created in the minds of the staff.

Prof. Fagbohun illegally suspended Prof. Babatunde Solagberu, the Provost of the College of Medicine. The College is a semi-autonomous institution. The LASU College of Medicine has its own Board of Governors in which the Vice-Chancellor is only a member. However, due to the control-freak nature of Fagbohun, he expected the Provost to be subservient to him. He cooked up stories, used the former Librarian of LASU, Dr Adebambo Oduwole to set up the Provost and subsequently suspended the Provost from his duly elected position. Unfortunately for the then librarian, the Provost was ahead of him, and he was caught in the act of bribing a junior staff to implicate him by stealing sensitive documents from his office. Sahara Reporters published this story on 14th June 2018. The audio recording can be listened to through this link: http://saharareporters.com/2018/06/14/audio-lasu-librarian-offers-nasu-staff-n25000-bribe-obtain-document-provosts-office#:~:text=News-,AUDIO%3A%20LASU%20Librarian%20Offers%20NASU%20Staff%20N25%2C000%20Bribe%20To,Obtain%20Document%20From%20Provost's%20Office&text=The%20Librarian%20of%20Lagos%20State,university%20only%20identified%20as%20Gbenga.

The 10th Governing Council under Professor Ninalowo overlooked the crime of the librarian whose punishment is dismissal from the service of the University. He is currently on sabbatical leave to Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, as Librarian.

The Vice-Chancellor does not have the power to suspend the provost of the College of Medicine who is duly elected and ratified by the Board of Governors. The same way the Vice-Chancellor does not have the power to suspend a duly elected Dean of any Faculty. Fagbohun did not only suspend the Provost, he also interdicted him. An interdiction does not last more than six months as stipulated in the LASU Laws 2004. The interdiction of the Provost has remained in force since 2018 till today. He has illegally appointed two Acting Provosts that are under his direct autocracy.

On staff salaries, Fagbohun has been paying only some fractions of staff salaries since April 2020. Majority of members of staff belong to one cooperative society or the other. The practice is that staff members save a percentage of their monthly salaries with their designated Cooperative societies. As a result, they are able to obtain loans two times their savings and buy goods from the cooperative societies to be deducted from their salaries. Fagbohun has only been able to pay some fractions of the salaries because he has failed to consistently remit staff deductions from April 2020 to December 2020. Invariably, Fagbohun has not been paying staff salaries fully since early of 2020. The debt portfolio of Fagbohun Led-Management to Cooperative Societies in LASU is over 700 million Naira. The Director of Cooperative Society in the Lagos State Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Industry has queried the Vice-Chancellor on this deficiency. Fagbohun is leaving LASU with a huge debt owed to Cooperative Societies in LASU and to external contractors running into millions of Naira for the incoming Vice-Chancellor.

The Vice-Chancellor’s inability to pay staff full salaries has not precluded him from throwing a party for himself and his cronies at the Radisson Blu Hotels, GRA, Ikeja, Lagos on 5th December 2020 with the University’s resources. It was a fanfare where money was spent lavishly while cooperative societies languish for funds.

On infrastructure, the only structure built during the five-year tenure of Fagbohun is the Makanjuola Lecture Theatre. The building was donated by Mr Aderemi Makanjuola of the Caverton Offshore Support Group. All the other buildings had been completed, but yet to be commissioned before Fagbohun came. However, Fagbohun has abandoned all the other buildings, and have not done any kind of renovations on them. Pictures of some of the dilapidated LASU structures can be seen below. World-Class University and Second Best university in Nigeria indeed.

The next Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State is likely to face an enormous challenge of stabilizing the institution against the façade of make-belief that characterises the Fagbohun Led- Administration. The 9th Vice-Chancellor would have to find a way to reconcile the rank and file of members of staff that Fagbohun has successfully sowed discord. While it will be unfair for any of the Staff Unions and Cooperative Societies to call for crisis against the next University administration on account of the debt left behind by Fagbohun, the Vice-Chancellor will have to source for external funds to be able to pay the debts.

The stage is set for the Governor of Lagos State and Visitor to Lagos State University, Mr Babajide Olusola Sanwo-olu, to appoint the next Vice-Chancellor of the institution. The result of the Monday 21st December 2020 interview of the five shortlisted candidates by the Joint Council and Senate Selection Committee seems to have been already communicated to the Governor and Visitor, in the order of merit. Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello made the first position, Professor Kabir Akinyemi came second and Professor Olumuyiwa Odusanya was third. If the emphasis on merit-based appointment of the next Vice-Chancellor of LASU is anything to go by, the first position out of the three shortlisted professors should be appointed by the Governor of Lagos State and Visitor to the institution.
Clearly, the Joint Council and Senate Selection Committee’s result shows the degree of preparedness of each candidate for the job. The different academic and administrative positions at the highest level of professional competence that Professor Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello has held suggest that the Joint Council and Senate Selection Committee’s recommendation of her name in the first position on the list was apt. The committee must have recognised her quintessential quality of leadership which the institution requires at this time in order to build on the current developments.
One thing stands Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello out of the two other candidates: her candidature is without any controversy. Kabir Akinyemi has been noted to be statutorily unqualified ab initio, having not met the 10 years’ post-professorial experience stipulated in the advertisement for the position. If appointed, this clause may lead to a crisis of legitimacy for him in the institution. The institution cannot afford such kind of crisis at this time, having experienced relative peace in the last five years. Kabir Akinyemi is not new to controversy in LASU though as his position as Chairman ASUU-LASU and the attendant roles he seemed to have played during the crisis of the John Obafunwa administration appears to have contributed to his dismissal from ASUU-LASU by the National Executive Council of ASUU over 5 years ago in March 2015. His pivotal role in the ill-fated Obafunwa administration also estranged him from the other staff unions in the University. He was to be given the so-called Obafunwa treatment of expulsion from his office as Dean of Students Affairs, but for the strong plea of some notable personalities within the campus, same March of 2015. This crisis of reputation may not be unconnected to the reason he lost the elections into the position of Dean of Science on the three (3) occasions that he contested. His immediate constituency, Faculty of Science, rejected him successively in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 Deanship elections. Besides, there is no record in the University Registry when Akinyemi was ever appointed or elected as a member of the University Governing Council.
The controversy with Olumuyiwa Odusanya’s candidature is about his non-possession of the PhD degree. Odusanya, a fine scholar, possesses a Fellowship certificate of the National Postgraduate Medical College of Nigeria, but the advertisement for the position clearly states that the candidate must be a scholar with significant impact in areas of international supervision and examination of PhD, and must also have supervised students (especially PhD). If appointed, this clause may also lead to a crisis of legitimacy as a Vice-Chancellor without a PhD cannot confer PhD degrees on students. Such a Vice-Chancellor cannot also chair the Senate of the University where results of PhD students are considered to be approved. In fact, LASU is presently laying off academic staff without PhD after long years of service. The argument that the fellowship of the Medical College is equivalent to a PhD has not gained traction because many fellows of the College across Nigeria also have PhDs. The reason is that both serve different purposes. While the fellowship eminently qualifies a doctor to practice, training for teaching and research in academia only comes with a PhD.
The Governor of Lagos and Visitor to Lagos State University does not need a seer to know who the cap fits in this circumstance. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello seems to understand the LASU terrain as her tenure as Acting Vice-Chancellor was a generally peaceful period. She coordinated well with all staff and student unions. It was after she left that crisis re-emerged during the Obafunwa administration.

Olatunji Alonge writes from LASU

It was a cheering news a few days ago when the media was agog by the news that the sexual harassment case against Prof. Akindele, a former academic staff of Obafemi Awolowo University, has been finally put to rest. Sentencing him to 2 years in prison will serve as a lesson to many academics who have a penchant for sexually harassing and molesting female students. This is, therefore, a wake-up call to many academics in Lagos State University (LASU) who continue to sexually harass and molest students, especially the female ones, thinking that by nature of their height and positions in the University, they can be shielded from prosecution.

LASU has been enjoying some relative peace in recent time. There has been some good media publicity emanating from the University. Many of the accomplishments, such as maintaining the best state University in the last 3 years, and the very recent one where LASU became a World Bank Centre of Excellence, are all delightful news. This is in spite of the recent call by the ASUU Branch of LASU requesting the University Management to pay all Academic Staff of the institution their long overdue Earned Academic Allowance (EAA) from 2009-2017.

Despite the significant academic and infrastructural progress that the institution has made in recent years, some old hands, especially some Professors of the institution, just like the embattled Professor Akindele of OAU, are running the image of the University into the gutters. Prof. Leke Fakoya, popularly called Lefuck, is the most notorious of the Professors in LASU. He is a Professor of English. He was the immediate past Dean of Faculty of Arts whose tenure was marred with inefficiency and lack of creativity. His major escapade is to pounce on and molest many young female undergraduates, and boast publicly about how good he is in bed. He is popular for boasting about the number of female students in every particular session he sleeps with.

Prof. Kayode Taiwo of Psychology is also another character in the trade of sexual molestation of female students. Like Lefuck, Prof. Taiwo actually harasses, molests and forcefully sleeps with female students in his office. He has said several times that the University Management can do nothing, as they are in the good books of the Vice Chancellor. His boastfulness about this led him to ensure that the University did not renew the appointment of a female Graduate Assistant, Miss Latifat Odunuga, because she refused to sleep with him. The lady was a First Class graduate of Psychology.

On the outside, you will think that Prof. Biodun Akinpelu of the Department of Educational Technology is the closest to God. He is popularly known as “coded”, as his first approach with the female students is to pretend to them as if he is preaching the gospel. He is a serial womanizer and a molester. No wonder he is on record to have impregnated his housegirl.

Dr. Surajudeen Mudashiru is an Associate Professor of Political Science. He is cool and collected. But Dr. Muda, as he is fondly called, is notoriously a female student’s regular toaster. His wife recently left him and took their kids away to the USA because of his notoriety in harassing female students.

I am aware that the University management is making efforts to rid LASU of bad eggs, such as a few of them mentioned above. There are still many more. The very recent dismissal of Dr. Odubunmi of Economics, Dr. Ogunwande of Chemisty and Dr. Gbeleyi of LASUCOM are some of such efforts. But the University needs to do more to ensure that female students in LASU are protected from being sexually harassed and molested from these randy Professors.

Shade Ogunpitan is a recent graduate of LASU. She writes from Lagos.