UNILAG to announce new VC Friday

By Bianca Iboma-Emefu

Governing Council of University of Lagos (UNILAG) will, on Friday, October 7, 2022, announce a vice chancellor for the institution.

Pro-chancellor and Chairman, Governing Council of UNILAG, Lanre Tejuoso, disclosed this, yesterday, during event heralding the 60th-anniversary celebration of the institution at the College of Medicine University of Lagos Idi-Araba campus.

This is as Tejuso explained that the institution would launch an endowment fund worth $500 million in commemoration of its diamond jubilee anniversary celebration, with the theme: “Eyes of the future.”

He said the endowment fund is meant to provide hybrid gadgets and up-to-date facilities that would replace the old ones in the institution.

The new vice chancellor would replace Ołuwatoyin Ogundipe, who was appointed the 12th vice chancellor by the governing council at a meeting on Friday, October 27, 2017.

In line with guidelines for the appointment of vice chancellor, the selection committee is to recommend three candidates for final consideration by the governing council.

The new vice chancellor would be the 13th since the inception of the institution. The outgoing vice chancellor has only 39 days to leave office next month.

Tejuoso said the incumbent vice chancellor, a professor of Botany, would take a bow in November after five-year single tenure. 

The pro-chancellor revealed the selection process was at its final stage and advised the management and staff of the institution to pray fervently for God’s intervention to ensure the new vice chancellor would emerge based on merit, God’s divine involvement, and not by man’s choice. 

Tejuoso added that he made the process democratic, transparent and fair play, saying whoever emerges, as the new vice chancellor, is automatically the choice of God. 

The council chairman lamented the ongoing nationwide industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), saying the development had crippled academic activities and disrupted the calendar of public universities, stressing that students had lost valuable time within the period.

“I sincerely hope the crisis is resolved soonest and academic activities return to tertiary institutions involved in the strike,” he said.