Saturday, December 1, 2012

Constitutional Review fallout! ‘Students’ld appoint Vice Chancellors’

Ekweremadu, Chairman, Constitution Review Committee

As the on-going nationwide constitutional review exercise by the National Assembly continues, Nigerian students are being positioned to have the powers to appoint the vice chancellors of their various tertiary institutions.
This position was made known by an educationist, Prof. Lai Olurode, who is current serving as a commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) recently.
“... And appointment of vice-chancellors should be decided by students,’’ Olurode proposed.
He also said that the current constitutional review, should favour gender balance, maintaining that no gender should be favoured over the other, even in the face of allocation of power in the education sector.
While calling for transformation in the education system in the country, he suggested that it will be nice for students to have the constitutional right to appoint who will be the vice chancellor of their institutions.
DigitalSENSEBusiness News recalls that both chambers of the National Assembly had a remarkable consensus that the 1999 Constitution should be amended, paving the way for the review across the nation.
“I believe the review is long overdue.  However, the method adopted will not make us achieve our desired outcome, especially based on how constitutions are reviewed in other developed countries. People must feel a sense of real active participation. The review going on is just being done on the superficial level. It is not based on clear-cut guidelines. There is no representation.
According to him, a constitution must have legitimacy before it is accepted, stressing that the 1999 Constitution was forced on citizenry by the military.
“There was no effective participation by the people. If we must review the constitution, there should be legitimacy,” he declared.
Olurode said that the review must encourage autonomy in the nation’s education sector, maintaining that “The constitution should be reviewed to give states the power to control their own resources and decide how many universities they can manage. The autonomy given to the education sector should be a constitutional matter.  I don’t think Nigeria allocates up to 13 per cent of its revenue to education.”
However, he further said, countries such as Ghana allocates up to 31 per cent to education, arguing that there should be a constitutional backup whereby 30 per cent of the revenue generated by each state is channeled into the education sector.
“This is the only way we can revive the sector. We should realise that the development of a nation is linked to the education sector,” he asserted.
In a related development, the management of the University of Abuja, Tuesday, November 20 shut down the institution following students’ protest.
The protesting students reportedly disrupted the second semester examination that was already underway and blocked the Abuja – Gwagwalada road and the main entrance to the University campus causing huge traffic congestion.
Soldiers and policemen were drafted to restore law and order in the University at the time of filing in this report.
Some of the protesters said the problem started when students of the Faculty of Engineering protested the inability of the school authority to produce a time table for their examination when students in other faculties had already started theirs, for alleged non-accreditation of the Faculty of Engineering.


Mary Onyeure 

... Making SENSE of digital revolution!

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