AFAS AND ITS AFFAIRS IN A QUAGMIRE

The association was yet again plunged into a deep water of trouble and controversy this past week when the association’s President, Daniel Anagwaonye, was impeached. His impeachment followed that of the Deputy Speaker of the FLC, Honourable Olumide Osinuga, who was expelled from the FLC. The two impeachments came as a shock to many. For the first time in a long time, questions were raised about what the FLC is all about and what qualifies one for impeachment or expulsion. Answers are not forthcoming. No resolution from the FLC sitting where the impeachments happened has surfaced to give a clear picture of what the issues are and why the punishments are justified. The constitution was not clear on what constitutes a gross misconduct neither does it say anyone that has not been properly tried should be impeached. More importantly, there was no constitutional provision backing the expulsion of an honourable from the FLC. According to the constitution, expulsion of any member of the association is premised on his or her being guilty of misappropriation of funds. Otherwise, the expulsion of an honourable remains at best an illegitimate invention of the FLC to punish its own members. But whichever way it is, peace has again been preached to the executive council and the political actors in the FLC. The leadership of the FLC has through the spokesperson accepted the resolution of the reconciliatory meeting with the Dean, Sub-dean General, Staff Adviser, with some members of the CPS and the press also in attendance. However, to get a clear picture of the whole brouhaha that culminated in the impeachment of Mr Daniel Anagwaonye, we need to look at some of the things that have pitched the FLC against the executive council and how the executive council responded to the seemingly threatening position of the FLC.

The greatest of the problem between the executive council and the FLC is the office space. For a long time coming, many things have been said about the secretariat and one of it is that, according to history it was handed over to the executive council in 1998. During the Deanship of Professor Ademola Dasylva, the immediate past Dean of the Faculty, he threatened to collect the secretariat because it was grossly misused by the occupants especially members of the executive council. Last session, the former General Secretary of the association, Honourable Tijani Selim was suspended for four weeks because he could not control the way the secretariat was being used among other things. With that, it showed that the secretariat was truly not being properly used.

This session too, the old song of the secretariat not being properly maintained by its landlord who is the General Secretary of the association, Mr Peter Alawode, and the Chief Tenants which are other members of the executive council. The FLC in its oversight function saw this and in its magnanimity advised that the executive council vacate their inner chamber of secrets to move to the outer office since they have more engagement with Afasites than the FLC or the Press who are also tenants occupying the secretariat space. Besides, if they move out and occupy the outer office, Afasites would have no reason to hang around since they would not want to interrupt the activities of the executive council unnecessarily, the FLC had thought. The advice, on the other hand, was one perceived to be laced with political motives, was met with anger by the executive council. To the executive council, it is a classical case of the tenant asking the landlord to vacate his own house. The reverse should be the case, the executive council thought. When the FLC met and officially decided to take over the inner chamber of secrets, they met with a stiff opposition from the executive council. According to an eyewitness report that supported the claims of a member of the executive council and the Speaker of the FLC, some principal officers of the FLC were chased out of the secretariat disdainfully by the General Secretary, Peter Alawode. By that action, the FLC felt slighted and disrespected as the most powerful organ of the association—hence, commemorating the genesis of the problem. Although the matter was begged to be put to bed at a stakeholders meeting held with the association’s Staff Adviser, Dr Adams Akewula, and the Sub-Dean, Dr Olusegun Peter Oke. However, FLC chose to do otherwise by revisiting the office occupancy issue in the hours that led to the impeachment of Daniel Anagwaonye who had been reinstated nonetheless.

The Freshers welcome budget was another issue that was included in the whole office saga and took a different dimension. The executive council alleged the FLC of not writing a letter to give approval for the withdrawal of N313, 550 to welcome the new students, hence, running into the alternative of an emergency congress for approval. The FLC Speaker, Hon. Peter Olagunju, in a bid to provide an explanation for this delay, stated that the Clerk was forced out of the office at the point of writing the letter. He also added that the clerk had her resolution book seized by the General Secretary, Peter Alawode, who had blatantly blunted out that he was not working with the constitution and later went ahead to write an ‘autonomous’ letter to the FLC. With the FLC still nursing its wound and the executive council taking more comfort on the driver seat and exuding more powers than the FLC (basically because the faculty management and the Congress provided them with their support) the fight lingered on.

Matters came to head on the 2nd of August, 2019 when the vice-president, Miss. Maryam Shittu, was summoned to give a report of the Freshers orientation programme and the president, Daniel Anagwaonye, to re-present the executive annual budget to the house. With backdrop information that the executive council had a sponsor for the Freshers orientation programme and a word of it not getting to the ears of any principal officer of the FLC, the vice-president was expected to provide an answer to that. Customarily, a report of the success or failure of the Freshers orientation programme is always given by the vice-president to the FLC but the vice-president was apparently oblivious of this and begged to be absent from the sitting whilst also maintaining that she only had business with the Audit Committee (has rightly constituted by the FLC). The vice-president’s absence and divergence from tradition, as always, was met with rage. When the Speaker announced that a sum of N21, 800 was spent without approval for the Freshers orientation programme, the narrative was beginning to take another form and the executive council was put on the hot seat.

Of course, the President was right to say he was not summoned to answer questions on the Freshers orientation programme but he was only wrong to have walked back to his seat without being told to do so by the Speaker. It was also true that he was not allowed to say anything about why he had presented two different budgets to the house or why he did not write to revoke the first one whether through sheer forgetfulness or undue oversight. The Speaker, in his hastiness, had only delved into the opaque narrative and allowed his chamber raise up an illogical impeachment. When the leprosy was left and the honourable members were labouring over the yaws of a matter that had been thought to be a forgotten one, the President again walked back to his seat without being told to do so making it his second and last action before he was pronounced impeached—an action which was spun by 8 as against 2 positive votes in the house.

Graciously, the President has been reinstated otherwise; we would have been forced with the harshness of the decision to impeach him without proper trial and declared guilty of misappropriating funds. According to the constitution, however, the form of punishment for an offence shall depend on its seriousness. These punishments include caution, censure, and fine, suspension from office and debarring from holding office. Walking out on the honourable members of the FLC, albeit an offence is not as grave as the FLC had painted it. If we also choose to go by the words of the FLC spokesperson in an interview with AFAS Press that another reason for the impeachment was that the two budgets presented by the president had two different figures that, most definitely, do not hold water. For the constitution rightly stipulates, that an executive can only be impeached or expelled from his office if found guilty of financial mismanagement and misappropriation of funds. President Daniel Anagwaonye was not pronounced guilty of this and his impeachment from all angles was therefore invalid. Suspension would have been a good judgement so that the president would learn that people in his position should know how to behave rightly. Two wrongs do not make a right.

The CPS, on the other hand, is a third party posing it own problems. Its decision to have a properly constituted FLC is laudable but ridden with suspicions. If we say that each constituency should duly elect its honourable members, knowing that elections around here are subjected to influence directly or indirectly, we might have honourable members that are puppets to the presidents of their constituencies. If this is so, it means the decision of the FLC would most likely reflect that of the departmental presidents. Consequently, we would have honourable members that are loyal to their presidents than the generality of the constituents and the association as a whole.

Secondly, the CPS is heard to be having a divided house (according to a source close to its hierarchy). At their formal meeting held on the 5th of August, 2019, the vice-president of Linguistics Students Association sent to represent the president of her department was not allowed to take part because she was late. Again, the president of Association of European Studies Students claimed total ignorance of the meeting while the president of Archaeology and Anthropology Students Association said there was no official communication about the meeting and was only informed when he ran into the Chairman of the Council, Michael Awoyemi. Even more worrisome is the fact that the CPS held a meeting on Sunday 4th August, 2019 with only 7 out of 24 members in attendance. This number is not up to two-third of members which is 16. Thus, the meeting in every sense is not worthy of being called an official meeting. More to this unofficiality is that 7 out of 24 people met to make resolutions and this notwithstanding questions the integrity of the CPS. The CPS who mandatorily demands due process in soliciting for a formally constituted FLC did not follow due process in its own decision-making process. Therefore, the CPS seems to have some lurking intentions that we are yet to find out. In addition, if the reports given by the President of Association of Classical Students, Shola Abimbola, that AFAS executive council really did get free drinks on every pack they bought from Rite foods, and the CPS was silent about it when the issue of sponsorship was raised at the reconciliatory meeting on August 5, 2019, then it will be justified to, yet again, question the integrity of its members. For now, let us all watch with intent until we find out the CPS’s stand in the association and where their interests really lies.

Now that the faculty management has waded in to ensure that there is peace between the executive council and the FLC and also went further to advice the CPS not to complicate matters, we hope it would be like that henceforth. We have had too many controversies in the association already with every arm throwing shades at one another. The association should not be allowed to break to a point where the faculty management would have to dissolve the association else we may just end up in a hopeless predicament.