While palpable displeasure can be felt among several members of the academic community in the Cross River University of Technology, CRUTECH, over the inability of the school’s Governing Council to advertise for the vacant position of Vice Chancellor of the institution, Emil Inyang, who heads the Council, has exclusively told www.calitown.com that advertisement for the vacant position of VC, will done ‘very soon” and the vacancy filled. He however did not point us to a feasible time frame within which this process will be done and dusted.
But sources within the institution who confided in www.calitown.com, are suspecting that the Inyang led Council, appears arm twisted and ready to do only the bidding of state governor, Ben Ayade, in picking a new Vice Chancellor for CRUTECH.
“University dons, Jones Atta and Emmanuel Ingwu, are front runners for the position, but Ingwu, we were told, is the choice of apparent secret forces enjoying the backing of Ayade”, one source who pleads anonymity, told www.calitown.com. “Can’t you people even see that the Governing Council, appointed by Gov. Ayade, will carry out the instructions of Ayade or risk being sacked. They are toothless until the governor directs them to do his bidding. Emil Inyang is only being polite and diplomatic in telling you people that the process will be activated soon; I swear to God that he has no idea of when that will be”, our source continued.
One Bruno Bassey, in a mail published online and a copy sent to www.calitown.com, believes “…that forces from outside the university have prevented the Governing Council of CRUTECH chaired by Dr. Emil Inyang from advertising and carrying out the selection of a new Vice-Chancellor to replace Prof. Anthony Owan Enoh, whose tenure expired since February 2019”. It was disclosed in the mail that, “…the Council has been ordered to hold an emergency meeting this week to announce Prof. Emmanuel Unimke Ingwu, a professor of adult education, as the new Vice-Chancellor of CRUTECH. Prof. Ingwu’s appointment if plans go as hatched, will gravely impugn the autonomy and statutes of the university which provides for the involvement of key organs of the university in the processes leading to the emergence of a Vice Chancellor. The more grave implications on the choice of Ingwu would mean that the two universities in the state will be led by persons of Obudu origin, a development that is causing deep-seated resentment in the ivory tower”.
While Bassey’s views are personal, one other source in the university, when contacted, maintained to www.calitown.com that the views “are apt and clearly capture the present state of things in CRUTECH and the ugly state of things to come. You know that these people have no regard for due process and do only what guarantees personal gains for them, over and above our general good and welfare. If all those who had governed this state in the past ignored the normal order of things, I just wonder if they would have met a state with viable institutions to govern. You people should go and pray for CRUTECH and this state.”
But government sources in Calabar quickly maintain that state governor, Ben Ayade, has no intention of subverting and personalising the VC selection process. “What will happen is that the best candidate will be given the rare privilege of being VC, to the benefit of the institution and the state at large”, we were told by government sources.
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