By: Felix Ikpotor
The face-off between the management of the University of Port Harcourt and a former chairman of Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, in the school, Professor Andrew Efemini has taken a new dimension with the school labeling him a troublemaker.
Efemini had in a petition he addressed to the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council of the University, Prof. Mvendaga Jibo, noted that the Lale’s administration had gone against the national fee schedule which states that the recommended fees for all levels of students should be a maximum of forty-five thousand Naira only (N45,000).
According to the petition: “The directive is that students who are coming into the university should be charged fees not exceeding N45,000 all inclusive. The circular warned against the collection of acceptance fees. But Prof Lale collected N30,000 as acceptance fee from each incoming student”
“Under Prof Lale’s watch, first-year students are charged approximately one hundred and twenty-eight thousand Naira (N128,000) excluding non-statutory charges at the various faculties and departments.
“Due to Prof Lale’s criminal concealment, Senate and Council have taken decisions to enforce illegal fees on unsuspecting parents and students with very damaging consequences.
“The implication of the excess charges on 1st-year students is that the Senate was misled into forcing 2nd year and 3rd-year students to repeat their classes for inability to pay their fees when the draconian Vice Chancellor has collected such fees in their first year.
“Prof Lale must urgently be removed as investigations into how much was collected and what he did with these illegal collections are carried out.”
Efemini in his petition also accused Prof Lale of “criminal and deliberate violation of the University Act, abuse of the university law and installing his stooges and surrogates as members of the university governing body.
He noted that: “Armed with his surrogates and cronies; Prof Okey Onuchukwu, Prof Antonia Okerengwu, Prof Femi Shaka and Prof Henry Alapiki, the vice chancellor proceeded to unleash terror on all dissenting voices. Prof Frank Uguimoh and I suffered from the ruthless abuse of office by Prof Lale and his illegal internal council members.
“Pro-Chancellor Sir, it is obvious that Prof Lale must be urgently removed from office and investigated to save the university from further high handedness and damage”.
However, the Vice-Chancellor in a statement accused the former ASUU chair of perfecting trouble.
He said: “The allegations against me are mere concoctions from the warped mind of Prof. Efemini and his gang of professional trouble makers. In his now characteristic bravado and clownish shadow-boxing exercise, Prof. Efemini levelled allegations against me, without providing irrefutable evidence to back up his bogus and reckless claims.
“No federal university is allowed to collect school fees from students. Discerning observers will expect a self-advertised champion of students’ causes to know the differences between statutory charges and school fees. Such selective short-sightedness is typical of Prof. Efemini, in his haste to reach conclusions, before verifying the facts of any matter.
“The National Universities Commission (NUC) directed universities that might wish to exceed the N45,000 ceiling to consult students and other stakeholders, which Prof. Efemini did, while he served as Acting Dean of Students’ Affairs in 2013. The subsisting ‘acceptance fee’ was paid by students during the tenure of Prof. Efemini as Acting Dean of Students’ Affairs. I was not the VC at the time the ‘acceptance fee’ became official policy. I must be a superhuman to mislead Senate, comprising very distinguished academics.
“I was not the VC when the Senate reached an agreement for its members to serve two-year tenure on the Governing Council. Nobody was ever prevented from contesting a second tenure, as recent election into the council has proven.
“Prof. Efemini is a certified fraudster, who has done incalculable damage to the hard-earned image of UNIPORT. His sadistic urge for cyclical chaos is not in synch with the activities of a conventional university. Prof. Efemini has not hidden his intention to disrupt normal academic activities in the university since the subsisting peace does not conduce to his operational structure.”
Lale added that the current attacks on him were not the first by Efemini on a VC, stressing that he levelled similar allegations against his predecessor, Prof. Joseph Ajienka.
He added: “Prof. Efemini was pardoned by the management on account of a previous infraction that almost earned him sack. He prostrated from office to office and recruited all manner of persons to intercede on his behalf. No sooner was he pardoned than he launched his latest shadow-boxing exercise, to the embarrassment of all men and women of goodwill, who pleaded for the waiver of his suspension.
“Prof. Efemini has long ceased to teach his courses and he does not have contact hours with students, as required by extant rules. It is now time for him to be released from the services of the university, to give him enough time to pursue his destructive programme of unremitting anarchy outside the sane precincts of the campus.
“Such an eccentric anarchist has no place in an academic community that prides itself on polished behaviour, refined discourse and deference to the rights of others. Prof. Efemini should no longer be allowed to pollute the campus with his wild imagination and shadow-boxing pranks.”
