By Innocent Anaba

Concerned Citizens for Educational Development, a civil rights group, has asked the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamau Adamu, to take steps to comply with the presidential directives on the recall of the 13 Vice Chancellors of some federal universities whose appointments were wrongfully terminated by the Federal Government in February.

The group, in a statement in Abuja, weekend, by its national coordinator, Solomon Adodo, expressed concern that despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s public apology for the wrongful dissolution of the governing boards of the affected universities, which preceded the sack of the Vice Chancellors and the directive that the affected university dons be recalled, the minister  is yet to comply with the President’s order.

It said: “We are dismayed that the Minister of Education, who is an appointee of the President, has chosen to misinterpret Mr. President’s statement and turned a deaf ear to the directive that the whole imbroglio of sack/removal and replacement/appointment, be reversed. This is unhealthy for our educational system and the apparatus of governance as a whole.

“Mallam  Adamu has unwittingly usurped the powers of the Visitor to all federal universities by his tacit refusal to reverse his missteps. To this extent, the minister must be called to order and compelled to do things in the right manner, to wit: recalling the sacked Vice Chancellors since he also made the decision unilaterally.”

The group recalled that most of the affected Vice Chancellors etched their names in gold as heroes of our thriving democracy while serving as Returning Officers in the 2015 general election.

It is to the credit of the affected university Vice Chancellors, according to the group, that the dons refused to compromise and rig the 2015 general election, the dividend of which all Nigerians now enjoy, stressing that, “As such, these patriots should not be mistreated with such actions as have been meted out to them by the Minister of Education.”

The group expressed hope that the universities would not be treated as what they called, “A fiefdom of political compensation where autocracy prevails, then Mr. President’s stand that Vice Chancellors cannot be removed or appointed without recourse to the Governing Council, ought to be implemented in its entirety.”