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A fierce legal storm is brewing around the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), following a dramatic move by Professor .M. Mukhtar, a senior academic and one-time Vice Chancellor candidate at Alqalam University, Katsina, who has dragged the Honourable Minister of Education and the immediate past acting Vice Chancellor of UNN, Professor Oguejiofor T. Ujam, before the Federal High Court in Abuja.

The suit, filed through his legal representatives, T. J. Aondo SAN & Co., challenges what Professor Mukhtar describes as a blatant failure of the then Acting Vice Chancellor to comply with the terms of his appointment and the Ministry’s directives, accusing him of dereliction, deliberate delay, and procedural irregularities in handling the process of selecting a substantive Vice Chancellor for one of Nigeria’s foremost federal universities.

In a pre-action notice dated June 25, 2025, addressed directly to Professor Ujam and copied to the Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council, Engr. Dr. Kayode Ojo, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Terkaa J. Aondo, made it clear that his client was determined to pursue the matter to its legal conclusion if urgent steps were not taken to address the grievances.

According to the pre-action letter, the Acting Vice Chancellor, who was appointed on February 7, 2025, to serve in an interim capacity for a period not exceeding six months with effect from February 10, 2025, was given a very specific mandate: to oversee a transparent, credible, and time-bound process leading to the appointment of a substantive Vice Chancellor.

The terms of the appointment, which explicitly barred him from contesting the substantive position, left no ambiguity about the nature of his task. Yet, the letter alleged that rather than fulfill this core mandate, Professor Ujam had spent more than four of the six allotted months engaging in activities outside his remit, including initiating staff recruitment exercises, while completely neglecting to commence the Vice Chancellor selection process.

Professor Mukhtar, a scholar with more than twenty-five years of experience in the Nigerian university system and a reputation that extends beyond the country as a visiting, sabbatical, and external examiner, stated through his counsel that he had hoped to participate in the process as a candidate but was deeply disillusioned by the Acting Vice Chancellor’s refusal to trigger the statutory procedures.

The lawyer reminded Professor Ujam that the entire process of appointing a substantive Vice Chancellor is carefully codified. It begins with an advertisement for the vacancy, which by regulation must remain open for at least six weeks.

Following this, a search team is constituted, taking about three weeks to identify additional qualified candidates who might not have applied on their own volition. After that, a Vice Chancellor’s Selection Committee, comprising members of the Governing Council and the Senate, is set up to screen the applicants, interview them, and recommend three names to the Governing Council, which in turn confirms one of recommendation by appointment as the substantive Vice Chancellor.

The whole process is elaborate and spans at least three months. Yet, more than four months into Professor Ujam’s tenure, none of these steps had been initiated, leaving less than twenty-five days before his acting mandate expires on August 10, 2025.

This inaction, the letter argued, was not an innocent oversight but a deliberate attempt to create confusion and justify an extension of his acting tenure, something expressly prohibited by the Ministry of Education’s April 2025 policy that introduced a strict non-renewable six-month tenure for all acting vice chancellors, rectors, and provosts across Nigeria’s federal tertiary institutions.

The letter emphasized that Professor Ujam’s failure to act in accordance with this policy had not only undermined the sanctity of his appointment but also placed the governance of UNN in jeopardy.

The lawyer also raised alarm over the attempt by the Acting Vice Chancellor and the current Governing Council to revive a discredited and expired process that was initiated by the dissolved Governing Council through an advertisement published on October 11, 2024.

That process, Professor Mukhtar’s legal team stressed, was riddled with procedural irregularities, had already expired after the statutory six weeks, and was invalidated when the Ministry itself cancelled it, leading to the appointment of Professor Ujam as Acting Vice Chancellor in the first place. To rely on that flawed advertisement or its resultant list of candidates, the lawyer warned, would be an egregious violation of both the law and the terms of the Acting Vice Chancellor’s mandate.

The pre-litigation notice was emphatic: unless the Acting Vice Chancellor immediately initiated a fresh and transparent process in line with the law and within the non-renewable six-month window, Professor Mukhtar would proceed to court without further warning.

“Take notice,” the letter declared, “that unless our client’s demands are met within seven days of the receipt of this communication, we shall, without further recourse to you, commence legal proceedings to compel compliance and to protect our client’s right to fair and transparent selection processes. Be guided accordingly.”

True to that warning, an originating summons has now been filed before the Federal High Court in Abuja.

The summons, which lists the Honourable Minister of Education as the first defendant and Professor Oguejiofor Ujam as the second defendant, seeks the court’s determination on a series of weighty questions.

These include whether, given the clear stipulations in the February 7, 2025 appointment letter, the Acting Vice Chancellor is not bound to initiate and conclude the process for the emergence of a substantive Vice Chancellor before the expiration of his tenure on August 10, 2025, and whether his refusal to do so invalidates his acting appointment altogether. It also asks whether, in light of the University of Nigeria Act, the Vice Chancellor , pro-Chancellor and her governing council are willing not under obligation to advertise the vacancy afresh in a reputable journal or widely read national newspaper and constitute a search team to identify and nominate qualified candidates.

Another critical question posed to the court is whether the defendants can validly rely on the expired October 11, 2024 advertisement to select a substantive Vice Chancellor, or whether any candidate list derived from that flawed process has any legal standing.

Furthermore, the suit queries whether it is even possible, within the limited time left before August 10, 2025, for the Acting Vice Chancellor to credibly oversee the elaborate statutory process for selecting a substantive Vice Chancellor, as mandated under Section 4(2)(a) and (b) of the First Schedule to the UNN Act.

Based on these questions, Professor Mukhtar is asking the court for a series of declaratory reliefs. These include declarations that Professor Ujam’s acting tenure must end on August 10, 2025, that he is not eligible to contest for the substantive position, that only a fresh process conducted in line with the law can yield a valid list of candidates, and that any reliance on the October 2024 advertisement or prior candidate lists is invalid.

He is also asking for an order directing the Honourable Minister of Education to relieve the Acting Vice Chancellor of his duties for failure to carry out his core mandate, as well as a perpetual injunction restraining the defendants from approving or conducting any selection process during Professor Ujam’s acting tenure.

The reliefs sought underscore the seriousness of the matter and its implications for the future of governance in one of Nigeria’s oldest and most prestigious universities.

For Professor Mukhtar, who has invested more than two decades in the Nigerian university system and who harbors ambitions of serving as Vice Chancellor, the stakes are both personal and institutional. His legal challenge, however, also raises broader questions about the credibility of leadership transitions in Nigerian tertiary institutions, the sanctity of appointment guidelines, and the ability of the Ministry of Education to enforce its own policies in the face of alleged administrative inertia.

As the matter heads to court, the atmosphere within the University of Nigeria remains tense. With less than a month before the expiration of Professor Ujam’s tenure, uncertainty looms large over the institution’s leadership. The court’s eventual decision will not only determine the fate of the current Acting Vice Chancellor but will also set a precedent for how acting appointments in universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education are managed in light of the Ministry’s non-renewable six-month policy.

For now, all eyes are on the Federal High Court in Abuja, where the question of whether UNN will emerge from this crisis with its governance structures intact—or slide further into confusion—will soon be answered. The council to the plaintiff is highly confident and declares that the kangaroo process will be set aside by the court.

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