Unmasking the Actors and Factors in the Deepening Conquest of the University of Abuja

By Professor Steven Alphonsus, The leadership saga at the University of Abuja has reached a crescendo, marking a significant turning point for the remainder of the Tinubu Presidency. As long as the Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Alausa, remains averse to law and order, the University will be a conquered entity in this autonomy-driven era. […]

By Professor Steven Alphonsus,

The leadership saga at the University of Abuja has reached a crescendo, marking a significant turning point for the remainder of the Tinubu Presidency. As long as the Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Alausa, remains averse to law and order, the University will be a conquered entity in this autonomy-driven era. It may be unseemly, traumatic, and intellectually defeating for all genuine lovers of university autonomy, good governance, and expression of best practices in all Nigerian universities. However, the continued subjugation and usurpation of the University of Abuja in the name of personal ego and the whims of Dr. Alausa only serve as a mirror to peep and appreciate the chilling sentiments of the power brokers encountered in the inner recesses of the current regime. 

It is now clear that the lingering saga at the University of Abuja was, from the beginning, a premeditated, well-choreographed power scheme that had to be delivered, no matter the consequences. It would not matter if the laws were blatantly breached, due process was disregarded, and the hallowed traditions and ethos of the system were whimsically discarded. What mattered to the powers that be was the singular pursuit and attainment of the set objective, using all available means, even unfair and crude if necessary.

The new appointed Vice-Chancellor is Professor Mathew Adamu, a 6-year professor from the Joseph Sarwuan Tarka University, Makurdi, formerly the University of Agriculture. In a letter of appointment signed by the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Abel O. Ehitan, the new interim helmsman was given three months, effective from the 11th of August 2025, within which to support the Governing Council of the University to complete the selection and appointment of a new substantive Vice-Chancellor.

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Curiously, the letter of appointment mandated Professor Adamu to carry out his defined mandate “in line with the relevant statutory provisions and extant guidelines,”. Yet his appointment was in flagrant disregard of the same statutory provisions and existing guidelines. Who is deceiving whom? This question becomes necessary because the existing rules referred to by the Ministry of Education have clearly and unambiguously vested the power to appoint the Vice-Chancellor, whether in acting or substantive capacity, in the Governing Council, and the procedure for achieving it within the confines of the University. No external body has any role to play.

However, under the stewardship of Dr. Alausa, the Ministry of Education has become the initiator and enforcer of the government’s usurpation of autonomy from federal universities and desecration of their governance and day-to-day management. In the particular case of the University of Abuja, the latest usurpation of the statutory power of the Governing Council which is in place, to illegally appoint a new acting Vice-Chancellor immediately after the previous similarly reign of Professor Patricia Manko Lar from the University of Jos, is a brazen attempt by the Alausa-led Ministry to normalise his predilection for impunity and lawlessness.

The stakeholders in the Nigerian university system should be alarmed and remain vigilant regarding the systematic transformation of the University of Abuja by Dr. Alausa into a guinea pig for illegal university governance. Once it succeeds at the nation’s capital’s beleaguered premier university, the invidious scheme will become the national template, and there will be no stopping these imperious forces from escalating the crisis of governance and complete subjugation of the universities. Operating as a ‘conquered entity’ that the University of Abuja has been reduced to now should not be an option for any Nigerian university!

Among the misguided actors behind the ongoing saga are a group of professors and other members of the University of Abuja Senate who, out of personal envy and vendetta, have continuously agitated against the appointment of the 7th substantive Vice-Chancellor, the young and brilliant Professor Aisha Sani Maikudi. Judging by their advertorial early last week, in which they expressed gratitude to President Tinubu for his intervention in the University, this group of anti-Maikudi Senate members—inclusive of some whose membership of the academic policy-making body was fraudulently obtained—once again revealed their agenda. Incidentally, given its timing, the paid publication by this hate-driven group provided the perfect political cover for Alausa to yet again engineer the latest leadership contraption at the University.

This would not be the first time the antics of the same internal protagonists would be prompted by vested interests in the corridors of power, led by the Minister, to implement their nefarious agenda at the University of Abuja. A similar scenario played out early in the year, when they agitated against the selection and appointment of Professor Maikudi, using the media and petitions to various quarters, including the Presidency and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at both the branch and national levels. Without any effort to verify the unfounded allegations, the government unilaterally announced the dissolution of the Governing Council and removed the Vice-Chancellor. These actions have remained inexplicable and unexplained to date; hence, unjustified.

Since then, the government’s actions, which also affected some other universities, have remained under growing public scrutiny and outcry. This has resulted in the recent reinstatement of the Vice-Chancellor of Alvan Ikoku Federal University of Education, Owerri, and the reappointment of Air Vice Marshall Saddiq Ismaila Kaita (rtd), the Pro-Chancellor of the dissolved 10th Council of the University of Abuja, to the same position at Bayero University, Kano. At the same time, the clarion calls and efforts by the National Assembly and others towards the restoration of Professor Maikudi and the internal members of the 10th Council appointed by the University Senate and Congregation have remained unabated.

It is within this context that the internal anti-Maikudi forces decided to re-enact their script of spoilers through the advertorial, hoping to leverage it to secure tenure extension for Professor Manko Lar, with whom they were working to extinguish Professor Maikudi’s prospects of reinstatement. They were tricked into the latest unholy alliance, only for Professor Lar to be denied her desperately sought extension and a new acting Vice-Chancellor appointed, yet from outside the university.

Now, they have been cynically used and dumped, which should finally eclipse their dreams of ever producing a substantive Vice-Chancellor from within their ranks. One does not need a rocket science to know and appreciate that once somebody, especially higher authorities, did not find you fit or worthy of being appointed to a given position in an acting capacity for three months, for which the dissenting group of professors had lined up two to three candidates, there is no way any of your fellow travellers will be appointed to the same position in substantive capacity for five years. It may be the personal cross the members of the anti-Maikudi clique have to carry. However, the obvious spiteful disregard of the over two hundred professors at the university in appointing the acting Vice-Chancellor on two successive occasions within six months was damning and unacceptable.

There are indications that the current Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council, Senator Lanre Tejuoso, is part of the plot that culminated in the sourcing and appointment of the new acting Vice-Chancellor from the university where he previously served as its Pro-Chancellor. In this role, Senator Tejuoso served as a cohort to the Minister.

For being part of the plot to bring in the new acting Vice-Chancellor in contravention of the law and due process, it means that the Pro-Chancellor does not believe in the enabling laws of the University of Abuja, or being capable as a 37-year-old institution to produce its leadership from within, or both. Either way, he has no moral justification to continue in office as a Pro-Chancellor because no one should preside over the affairs of an entity if he does not believe in its laws. Senator Tejuoso should be honourable enough to resign as Pro-Chancellor

Regarding the other members of the so-called 11th Council, particularly the internal members appointed by the University Senate and Congregation, it is now evident that they are as clueless as they are a despicable liability to the university community. Desperate to be elected and aided in their electoral victory by the gangster-like approach of the just-exited acting Vice-Chancellor, who presided at both the Senate and Congregation elections and disqualified several eligible members from standing for the elections and or voting. The composition of the current internal members has been uninspiring, and the chickens are now coming home to roost. It is unimaginable that rather than the last bastion of defending the university’s noble cause, some internal members have reportedly been part of the misguided few celebrating the latest onslaught on its autonomy and integrity. It did not matter to them that their power to appoint an acting Vice-Chancellor was whimsically usurped.

Meanwhile, the university is proceeding with the process for the selection and appointment of a new substantive Vice-Chancellor against the directives of the House of Representatives Committee on University Education, which has instructed the Council to halt all processes until it concludes its investigation hearing on the unwarranted leadership changes in the affected universities. It is surprising that the Pro-Chancellor, a former National Assembly member with an ambition to return in 2027, is determined to snub the efforts of his former constituency despite the fact that both the university community and the nation at large are awaiting a positive resolution. Indeed, interesting times lie ahead.

Finally, the University of Abuja is at a critical juncture.  The choice for all the stakeholders, including the government, is clear: return the University to the path of sanity or allow it to continue wallowing in an externally induced crisis of governance and retrogression. Nothing short of restoring the rule of law and the prescribed processes, procedures, and practices will suffice. Arrogating to themselves the unlawful powers to rejig, reorient, and govern the university by external forces or their imposed agents will be exercised in futility. The University is statutorily autonomous and must be allowed to operate as such, based on properly constituted governing authorities. We are encouraged that the current balance of social forces strongly favours that.

By Professor Steven Alphonsus, Abuja Leadership Centre, University of Abuja