President Bola Tinubu has removed Aisha Maikudi as the vice-chancellor of the University of Abuja (UniAbuja).
In a statement on Thursday, Bayo Onanuga, a special adviser to the president, announced significant leadership changes affecting some federal universities.
Among the institutions affected is UniAbuja, which was earlier renamed the Yakubu Gowon University.
The leadership shakeup, at UniAbuja, saw the dissolution of a governing council whose legitimacy has been an issue of controversy.
In December 2024, a governing council, headed by the retired air vice-marshal Saddiq Ismaila Kaita, approved the appointment of Aisha Maikudu as the UniAbuja VC in a contentious selection process that attracted heated criticism from stakeholders in academia.
Maikudi’s appointment as VC took effect on January 1, 2025, and was to subsist for a nonrenewable tenure of five years.
Prior, she served as UniAbuja’s acting VC from July 5, 2024.
Maikudi’s uptake of the VC office came after a months-long controversy surrounding her eligibility and the selection process.
On December 24, a group of professors reportedly submitted a protest letter to the education ministry to seek the dissolution of UniAbuja’s governing council.
The professors claimed that the chairman rejected over 87 applications and invited three candidates to favour a preferred candidate.
The protesters claimed the council itself was improperly constituted, with internal members handpicked by the immediate past VC.
According to the petition, key criteria for the VC position, such as a minimum of ten years of professorial experience, were disregarded in the advertisement for the post the VC published in newspapers in August 2024.
This, they alleged, propped up the then-acting VC who had just over two years of experience as a professor.
More to follow…
TheCable
