For about one year now, the Akwa Ibom State University, AKSU, the 34th state university in Nigeria, was alleged to be enmeshed in power crisis. The principal characters in the brawl were said to be the pro-chancellor and chairman of the institution’s governing council, and members of the university senate led by the vice chancellor. The scuffle, Newsworld gathered was that Okon Eminue, an associate professor of political science, who is the pro-chancellor, had been exercising arbitrary powers since becoming the chairman of the governing council. This became hard to chew for members of the Senate, who protested through the vice chancellor, Sunday Petters, a professor of geosciences. A source told this magazine in confidence that the problem had been the pro chancellor’s making because he emasculated the vice chancellor and even the registrar. He accused Eminue of usurping the office of the vice chancellor and making himself the administrator of the university, a duty that would have been Petters’. According to the source, all spending and appropriation of funds was done by the pro-chancellor. “He even pried into the recruitment of staff like messengers and cleaners and took more than three official vehicles to his house,” the source added. This is said to have angered many other academics in the institution, who had come with wealth of experience in the running of universities hoping to add to add quality to the new state varsity. Governor Godswill Akpabio, the visitor to the university, it was learnt, had to wade into the crisis to settle both parties. At the peace meeting, the governor then decided to appoint a chancellor and informed them accordingly on the development. But when Petters spoke with Newsworld on phone, he denied any crisis in the university saying it was just an imagination of the media and the public to blow up things that were not founded. He instead said that there were many other issues of importance that needed to be given attention to such as rising the standard of the university. For the vice chancellor, the only thing that appears to be a crisis in the university is the 2009 FGN/ASUU agreement, which has essential effect on the salary scale of lecturers of the institution. Petters said while other institutions are joining the ASUU strike, the governor is working day and night to ensure they enjoy the package due to every staff of the university. Eminue himself expressed his satisfaction in working with Petters. At the installation of Alhaji Najib Hussaini Adamu, the Emir of Kazuare as the first and pioneer chancellor of AKSU, the pro-chancellor commended the vice chancellor and his management team for working to update the infrastructure in the institution. Like Petters, the pro-chancellor added that the most pressing need of the university is the issue of the new salary structure for university lecturers, which is based on FGN/ASUU agreement of 2009. Commending Akpabio for showing inclination towards the welfare of staff of the institution; he hoped that the new package would be approved for the school soon by the governor. Alhaji Adamu, the university chancellor, promised to work assiduously with the management of the institution towards actualising the dream and standard of the university. He envisaged a future for the institution whereby it will collaborate with international research academies to become a world acclaimed university for development, especially in the area of agriculture. The monarch seized the occasion to chide university scholars on their role in national unity, warning them to be mindful of their utterances not to cause crisis and only use education to fortify the unity of Nigeria. For Akpabio, the emir is an academic godfather, chosen to come and apply his wealth of experience in advising and mentoring the young university to grow and become one of the best 20 in Africa within the next few years. AKSU was conceived in 2000 by the administration of former Governor Victor Attah as a university of science and technology for specialised courses in engineering technology, but was later turned into a conventional multi-campus university by Governor Akpabio in May 2008. The governor said the re-strategisation was necessary in order to meet the needs of Akwa Ibom people in different spheres of manpower development and because the former legislation that established the school was defective. On September 15, 2009, a new bill establishing it as a conventional university was passed and subsequently signed into law by the governor to take effect from June of the same year. The university got its license to operate from the National Universities Commission, NUC, on October 5, 2010, admitting its pioneer students numbering 300. NUC has further approved the admission of 800 students in the next academic year for the institution.

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