The President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Emmanuel Osodeke, continurs to suffer more ignominy and backlash from institutions and the public alike following his infamous rant wherein he points fingers at a number of state Universities while labeling them quacks and irrelevant.
Consequently, Ekiti state University management outrightly replied the ASUU president describing his utterances as arrant nonsense.
The University described the comments as “totally unacceptable and condemnable”.
The university, therefore, demanded a retraction and an apology from the president.
“The Management calls on Professor Osodeke to toe the path of honour by retracting the provocative remark and tender an unreserved apology without further delay,” it said in a statement by its Head of Directorate of Information and Corporate Affairs, Bode Olofinmuagun.
The statement noted that the university viewed the comments as “denigrating, unfortunate, reckless and unwarranted.”
Similarly, The The management of the Kwara State University condemned the ASUU chairman’s uttersnces saying it views the statements as undeserving of an academic of Professor Osodeke’s purported stature who should know better than to denigrate institutions of higher learning for one reason unrelated to any factor used to to measure the standard of institutions anywhere in the world. .
Professor Osodeke’s statements are tantamount to bullying. They are reckless, uncalled for and an affront to the status he holds as the National Head of the Union of Academic Staff in Nigeria, Said Dr. Saeedat Aliy the Director, University Relations.
In the same vein, the public have also turned on Prof. Osodeko. A Nigerian commentator, Yusuf Usman, opined that Mr Osodeke has betrayed the essence of quality leadership by making ‘irresponsible’ statements “on a section of the constituency that has placed him on the saddle of leadership.”
He said it is wrong for Mr Osodeke, the president of a union that prides itself as an association of intellectuals, to refer to the universities whose members of staff elected him as “quack” universities.
He added that the ASUU president’s comments portray a betrayal of trust “and he must either prove his charges against these universities with facts and figures or publicly tender unreserved apology for his inciting, indecent and unsubstantiated diatribe.”
Another Nigerian academic from the Federal University, Gashua, Yobe State, Dagari, noted that it is a shame to hear such a statement from the ASUU president on live television.
He described the comments as an insult of the highest order, saying Mr Osodeke “has gone down in history as the worst ASUU national president ever.”
Mr Dagari added that the ASUU president should not be allowed to preside over the proceedings of the forthcoming National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the union.