JGN Onyekpe
Yesterday, Monday, December 23, 2024, the Vice Chancellor of dear University of Lagos, Akoka, Professor F T Ogunsola, OON; FAS, and her management team had a Town Hall meeting with the senior staff members of the varsity community. This was unprecedented! It is commendable, therefore.
Universally, such a meeting is usually called on the basis of, or in response to, some intelligence report on security or industrial relations situation. Sometimes, it is the leader’s intuitiveness and perspicaciousness in action. Therefore, the UNILAG meeting would appear to have been an adroit response by the Management to some report, or driven by intuition, or a combination of both.
There was an urgent need to establish the fact of any tension and then deal with it.
The interaction at the Town Hall meeting between Management and Staff was cordial and peaceful, and even entertaining as it was laced with some drama and melodrama.
The Vice Chancellor used the opportunity of the meeting to enumerate her achievements and on-going efforts towards more progress. Staff responses were generally in appreciation of the Management. Expectedly, some requests were presented, not without some suggestions.
I can conclude, because I was in attendance, that there was no evidence of any tension.
Therefore, I commend the Vice Chancellor and her Management team.
Madam Vice Chancellor,
Hearty congratulations!!
But Madam Vice Chancellor, with all due respect and high sense of responsibility, I would suggest that you hold two other Town Hall meetings, first with the junior staff, and then with the students or their representatives. It is important that constructive engagement is inclusive. All stakeholders should be given some sense of belonging.
I now return to the Town Hall meeting with the senior staff and end my piece.
If there were and still are more fundamental issues than those raised by staff yesterday;
If we could not raise such issues, simply because we did not have the courage to raise them;
Since we chose not to raise the issues, in spite of the propitious opportunity provided by Management for engagement;
Let all the grumbling and rumbling stop;
While the cowards continue “to die many times before their deaths”!
Should I, on account of this piece of mine, be lumped with the cowards, I won’t protest!
Isn’t it my fundamental right to metamorphose into a coward, if indeed I was a valiant?
J G Nkem Onyekpe, PhD; FHSN.
Professor of African History & Political Economy, University of Lagos, Akoka.