By Gabriel Olawale

FORMER Minister of Communications, Maj. Gen. Tajudeen Olanrewaju (retd), yesterday, warned against the imposition of a non-indigene as a Vice-Chancellor for the Lagos State University, LASU.

Olanrewaju, in a statement, expressed worry that indigenes of Lagos State are being shoved aside “amid a crude and dangerous insensitivity in a new recolonization of Lagos.”

The statement reads: “Are we going to be buried forever under the burden and the yoke of servitude in Lagos state? The answer, of course, is no. This is why all conscionable indigenes of Lagos State should out rightly reject the attempt to impose any contender as the next Vice-Chancellor of Lagos State University over better qualified indigenes of our state.

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“Other well qualified contenders are  Professor Olumuyiwa Odusanya, Professor Senapon Bakre, Professor Kabir Akinyemi, and Professor Muyiwa Awofolu. Why is a particular contender being pushed so recklessly to occupy the Vice-Chancellor’s office as if it is some hereditary position in a callous contempt for the indigenes of our state? Surely, this is not the vision of Alhaji Lateef Jakande who built the institution more than 35 years ago to give the indigenes a quality education and at once give the indigenous professionals a place in the sun. This is no longer the case.

“Our people are being shoved aside amid a crude and dangerous insensitivity in a new recolonization of Lagos.

“They are pushing us to the wall. They are treating us with contempt. As a stakeholder and as a committed indigene, I am seriously advising the authorities to move swiftly away from this callous, ill-conceived decision whose untoward implication no one can fathom.

“I remember clearly that when former Professor Fatiu Akesode contested for the Vice-Chancellorship of Ogun State University several years ago, he was rejected and told to go back home to Lagos state.

“And now what is naturally our own is being taken away one after the other by partisan alien hands. This is totally unacceptable. It is wrong. It is unjust.

“While I will continue to encourage merit, fairness in the app ointments to public office, I will never stop in the defense and in the protection of the inalienable rights of well qualified native Lagosians whose collective destinies are now being brazenly eroded and trampled upon on their own soil. This is one contempt and insult too many.”

Vanguard News Nigeria