TWO THINGS ARE WRONG WITH NANS INTERVENTION IN MOTE’S CASE, PROF. OLAYINKA SAYS

mote

Prof. Olayinka, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan has remarked that NANS intervention in the rustication of Mote would have been successful had the Association applied wisdom in its mode.

The Vice Chancellor stated this while answering questions bordering on his attitude to injustice in the case of Michael Ekpeti (Mote)’s rustication asked him by the correspondents of UCJUI.

Prof. Olayinka noted that he (Mote) was initially rusticated for two semester but the punishment was later reduced to one semester for an offence “which ordinarily should have been expulsion”.

The major problem of Mote started, according to Prof. Olayinka, at the point when rather than appeal to the University Council, he went ahead to solicit the support of his friends to externalise the issue.

“In this case, students of Polytechnics, Colleges of Education, Cooperative College wrote to us that there was injustice in rusticating Ekpeti, a 400 level or now 500 level student of Petroleum Engineering that we should rescind our decision within two weeks and also apologise to him.

“Two things are wrong. That is not an appeal; it’s a threat. I wouldn’t even have been too bothered if it had come from UCJ because that is a UI thing. What is the business of an external body to come here and tell us what to do failing which they were going to invade the campus which I think they carried out. They are interlopers for this purpose.

“By the time Dr Emina, the President of the Alumni Association finally succeeded in convincing Mote to appeal to the Council as the only rightful solution to the problem, it was too late as the members of the Council decided the punishment should stay to serve as a deterrent to others,” the V.C. said.

I sympathised with him. And in fairness to the immediate past President of the Students’ Union Aliyu and his successor Nifemi, they pleaded but my colleagues were of the opinion that we let the verdict as it was.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *