VC Appointment Crisis: OAU shut over Ife indigenes’ protest, students ordered to vacate campus

The management of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, yesterday, asked its students to embark on a two-week mid-semester break.

This came after some aggrieved indigenes of the university’s host community besieged the campus with charms and other fetish objects in protest against the appointment of Prof Adeboye Bamire as the substantive vice-chancellor of the institution.

The management alleged that the protesters assaulted some workers and students of the institution.

In a release by the university’s Registrar, Mrs. M. I. Omosule, a copy of which was obtained by The Guardian, revealed that the break would start tomorrow, March 28 and the decision for the break was arrived at a management meeting held, yesterday.

Recall that the majority of universities across the country have shut down as the Joint Action Committee (JAC) of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) and Non-Academic Staff Union of Allied and Educational Institutions (NASU) have embarked on a two-week warning strike, starting from Monday.

The decision may completely cripple activities in Nigeria public universities considering the ongoing strike of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Nigerian Academic the National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT).

While the leadership of ASUU in OAU had declared an indefinite strike over unpaid Academic Earned Allowance, members of a parallel academic union on the campus, the Congress of University Academics (CONUA) refused to join the industrial action and had continued teaching. (The Guardian: Excluding headline)