Sacked ASUU-LASU members ask Sanwo-Olu to intervene

Secretary of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Lagos State University chapter, Tony Dansu, has appealed to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu to intervene in the case of the dismissed executive members of the union.

LASU’s governing council had on Thursday dismissed Dansu and two other executives from the service of the school over accusations of unauthorised possession and use of official documents.

Specifically, they were accused of illegally accessing the official file of the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun, at the Faculty of Law and taking some documents from it.

Dansu accused the management of the institution of sacking him for trying to expose some illegal acts perpetrated by the management of the school.

Calling on Gov. Sanwo-Olu, he said: “We have written several letters to the governor and we know that he will come to our aid, because he does not support impartiality.

“Our dismissal was a struggle between the truth and falsehood, which is quite unfortunate that we found ourselves in this university system.

“The leadership of the university is actually doing the direct opposite of what the university stands for, by killing voices in the system.

“This is what the union is trying to check, because we are the watchdog in the system and conscience of the nation”.

The ASUU leader explained that the Lagos State House of Assembly had, three weeks ago, invited the union and the university management to address the issues.

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The union leader advised that the two parties sheathed their swords and settle.

“The House asked the vice-chancellor to come up with a committee, with the hope of achieving three things, including the recall of the erstwhile chairman and vice-chairman of the union that were dismissed in 2017.

“It also involves the restoration of the checkup dues that was illegally stopped by the management and stopping the panel committee,” he said.

According to him, the House had directed that all the parties reconvene, after three months, to assess the achievements, “but the [LASU] management has now broken the agreement.

Dansu recalled that the union had expected that the vice-chancellor, on his appointment, would hold firmly unto the rule of law, being a professor of law.

“When he got here, we discovered that he continued with the trend which others have been doing before him.

“This nepotism does not pay a university; we insisted on transparency, which he saw clearly, that union was going to give him a problem, so they decided to kill the union.

“That was the reason they came up with so many charges against the chairman and vice-chairman of our union in 2017 and also dismissed them,” he said.

Dansu said the union had also demanded for an investigation on why the VC’s promotion was backdated from 2014 to 2008, because there was no Governing Council document to support it.

“Instead of the university management to address the issue, they queried me and the Assistant Secretary of the union, that we stole confidential documents.

Dansu said that the affected union officials had approached the court to seek redress on the matter, and the court in its ruling also said that they have right to official documents as unionists.

However, the university spokesman, Ademola Adekoya, maintained that the university proceeded with the disciplinary process following a court judgment that permitted it to do so.

Adekoya said the court also ruled that following the decision of the university on the matter, the union could still approach the court for a redress if they were not satisfied.

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