Bar convicted academics from teaching, Babalola tells NUC

The Founder of Afe Babalola University in Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Aare Afe Babalola (SAN), has urged the National Universities Commission (NUC) to have laws that will bar any convicted academic from teaching.

He said it is time the universities regulatory body reviewed its extant laws so that academics would stop embarrassing Nigeria among the comity of nations and save the Education sector from ignominy.

Babalola spoke on Sunday in Ado-Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, at the third anniversary of ABUAD’s 400-Bed Multi-System Hospital and the send-forth for its Chief Medical Director (CMD), Prof. Fola Esan.

The legal luminary frowned at the action of a professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar (UNICAL), Peter Ogban, for manipulating election results.

He regretted that the rots in the country’s university system must be urgently cleansed.

According to him, reviewing the existing laws will not only provide the avenue for shaming such erring lecturers, it will also make it difficult for such professors from securing alternative teaching jobs in any other university in any part of the country.

“I want to use this medium to call on the NUC to review its laws about the bad eggs in the university system.

“The moment any academic is convicted of any crime while serving in one university, the NUC should make it impossible for him to be employed in any other university in the country again.

“This is one of the ways to sanitise the Nigerian university system,” he said.

Babalola, who recalled that few years back, teachers, especially university lecturers, were regarded as the “mighties” and embodiment of decency, have bastardised the profession for pecuniary gains.

“Indeed, that was the true situation at that time. But unfortunately, are these facts true of professors of today?” he queried.