By Wole Balogun
The Vice Chancellor of Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE),Prof. Abayomi Fasina on Tuesday has advised the president-elect, Sen. Bola Tinubu to ensure that federal Universities in Nigeria have autonomy, saying taking such policy direction would sanitize the system and ensure smooth and adequate running of the University and a system that will be free of industrial actions.
Vice Chancellor (FUOYE),
Fasina gave the advice during the fourth matriculation ceremony of the post graduate students of the university held in Oye-Ekiti.
He said one of the challenges facing the universities in Nigeria was incessant strike actions by Academic Staff Union of University(ASUU) as a result of poor funding and lack of infrastructure.
Fasina appealed to the president-elect to employ technocrat to develop the Agriculture, economy, Education among other sectors of the country to promote stability and efficiency of his government.
” I want to appeal to our incoming president-elect, Sen. Bola Tinubu to approve university autonomy which will put an end to incessant strike that always affect the academic calendar of the tertiary institutions.
” FUOYE is moving on a high speed to ensure that our academic calendar is stable and working but other univeristies are badly affected as a result of prolonged strike.
” If government can employ technocrat who are expert in various field such as Education, Economy, Agriculture and business, the development of Nigeria will be rapid in all ramifications,” he said.
The don said FUOYE was determined to compete favourably with other older universities in post graduate studies and his administration would not relent in producing best students in various academic fields.
Fasina advised the postgraduate students to attend lectures regularly and carry out their research diligently to enable them finish their programme in record time.
He noted that scholarship awards for best research students and best thesis would soon be introduced in the post graduate school
The vice chancellor stated that postgraduate school would soon be offering courses in Mass Communication, Business Administration, Accounting, Finance, Linguistics and Language Education.
Others are Public Administration, History and International Studies, Peace and Conflict Resolution, Science Education, Business Administration and Political Science.
Corroborating Fasina’s submission, the Dean of Postgraduate school of the university,Prof. Raphael Omolehin, said that the major challenges facing the universities rapid growth was lack of autonomy.
Omolehin noted that the university management does not have power to employ academic staff without taking permission from different government agencies.
He urged Federal government to provide adequate funds for universities and improve staff welfare to end regular strike that often alter the academic calendar.
