Tobi Adebayo
Former Chairman of the Governing Council of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Wale Babalakin has said that public universities in Nigeria will continue to rot unless they are out of full control of the government.
Babalakin said this during an interview on Arise News monitored by ThisNigeria on Wednesday.
He lamented that public universities were being handled like government parastatals where “anything goes”.
“Universities have become just another government parastatal where all sorts happen. For the universities to thrive, it has to be out of the full control of the Ministry of Education. All the new appointments made in UNILAG were presided by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Sonny Echono whereas he has no business with the school,” he said.
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Babalakin also questioned the authority of the perm. sec whom he claimed tried to stop him from looking into certain issues affecting the university.
“During the panel set up to check the Vice-Chancellor of UNILAG, Toyin Ogundipe, Echono sent me a signed letter not to talk about some issues, including the school’s accounts and the library collapse incident. Why should he have such authority? We owe it to young Nigerians to rebuild the country’s educational system. We cannot keep running these institutions like factories,” he said.
