Education: Expelled students are the ones behind calls for my sack – VC

Vice Chancellor (VC) of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Prof. Vincent Tenebe has dismissed the call for his removal as VC of the institution, saying the group behind it was made up of former students expelled from the school.

Students of the university, under the aegis of the ‘Congress of NOUN Students’ had recently called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the new Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, to remove the Vice Chancellor and other principal officers of the university over alleged extortion.

The group in an open letter signed by some officers of the Congress, said the school, which was “established to provide flexible, accessible and affordable education to Nigerians has now been turned to where certain cliques of academia extort helpless students, whose only crime is their quest for university education.

But the Vice Chancellor in a chat with The Authority, described the claim as frivolous, saying that there is no any registered group in the country that is associated with the name ‘Congress of NOUN students’.

He said, “There is no registered group known as Congress of NOUN students. The writers and promoters of that write up are former students who were expelled from NOUN for failure in character and learning.”

Meanwhile, the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) has condemned the agitation of Congress of NOUN Students (CONS) .

In a press statement signed by its national president, Comrade Usman Tijjani, NANS said its attention has been drawn to the uncouth activities of students who were expelled by NOUN on grounds of misconduct and poor academic performance.

The statement reads: ”We condemn this backward and retrogressive act in the strongest terms even as we urge them to seek redress through due process and laid down procedure if they have any grouse that merits attention,”
”Let it be known that students unionism has departed from the era when dull heads and unserious students could easily incite a conflagration just to thwart the academic calendar and achieve their fiendish aims. The leadership of NANS has vowed to stamp out the inimical charades of this sort from all our campuses nationwide.

”It should be made emphatically clear that all legitimate Students’ Union are registered with the Nation­al Association of Nigerian Students (NANS) and from our records we do not have any such body as the Congress Of NOUN Students (CONS).” the students body emphasized.

It would be recalled that the ‘Con­gress of NOUN students’ had also listed other reasons that prompted the call for the removal of key officers of the university to include payment for course materials without receiving the materials, the increment in the charges for compulsory registration fee for research project for final-year students, three sets of law graduates of which, none has been mobilized to the Nigerian Law School, among others.