Posted by By TONY OSAUZO, Benin on
Pro-Chancellor of the University of Benin (UNIBEN), Edo State, Senator Alex Kadiri, dropped a bombshell yesterday, as he announced the dismissal of a 65-year old Professor of the institution, over sexual harassment.
Pro-Chancellor of the University of Benin (UNIBEN), Edo State, Senator Alex Kadiri, dropped a bombshell yesterday, as he announced the dismissal of a 65-year old Professor of the institution, over sexual harassment.
The sexagenarian Professor, whom he did not name, he said, was due for retirement November but had to be dismissed by the University authorities having been found guilty of sexually harassing a female student.
Kadiri, who spoke during a special convocation ceremony of the University, shocked his audience, who included the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Mohammed Sa'ad Abubakar III and the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ambassador Baba-Gana Kingibe, as he made the revelation.
He said with the old Professor's misdemeanor, radical steps would now be deployed on lecturers' annual assessment.
'The assessment of lecturers by students of the University will now be used for promotion of lecturers beginning from the next academic session," he informed.
Reading his address, however, Kadiri called for a National Education Summit to urgently proffer solution to the myriad of problems facing the education sector in the country.
Kadiri observed that the plan of Nigeria to emerge one of the world's top 20 economies in 2020 would only be a pipe dream if the problems in the education sectors were left unresolved.
Citing Uganda where brain-drain has caused a crisis in the education sector, he noted that Nigeria was already passing through the same experience as only one, out of the 25 Nigerians recruited for the Nigeria Space Research and Development Agency, was left with the agency.
While urging the government to look into the demands of Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which resulted in the union's last strike, the Pro-Chancellor urged the Federal Government and ASUU to close ranks so that the education of young Nigerians would no longer suffer hiccups on a continuous basis.
Describing the major challenges of the university as shortage of funds and conflicting signals from government, the Pro-Chancellor called on the federal government to complete all on-going projects at the University to enable the University raise its admission from a little above 5,000 to 10,000 annually.
In his speech, vice-chancellor of the University, Prof. Emmanuel Nwanze called for electoral reform, saying that a reformed electoral institution was the only guarantee of a dignified electoral outcome.
'It is greater than all issues including the personalities and political coloration of who claims power now. It is the only way to El Dorado and Uhuru", he said.
In apparent agreement with the views of the Pro-Chancellor, President Umaru Yar'Adua, stressed that the country's attainment of one of the world's top 20 economies in 2020 could only be achieved through investment in human capital development.
Represented by Kingibe, the President called on the Nigerian Universities to be at the vanguard of the journey of national restoration, just as he enjoined them to partner with the organized private sector to generate funds for the development of their infrastructure.
At the event, the Sultan was installed the 7th Chancellor of the University and also conferred with an honorary degree in Law.
In his acceptance speech, the royal father said the significance of the occasion lay in the fact that the Sokoto caliphate was a polity predicated on a strong tradition of learning and had left its intellectual footprints on many parts of the West African sub-region.
He said no serious academic community could thrive without subscribing to the ethos of Universality and freedom of enquiry, adding that the Nigeria's evolution as a nation should not be divorced from its cultural heritage and intellectual traditions.
The Sokoto Monarch called on the nation's researchers and policy-makers to pay close attention to ' our indigenous knowledge systems in order to come up with innovative solutions to some of our national problems".