It was most appropriate that the University of Abuja, which has since been renamed Yakubu Gowon University, chose for the inaugural public lecture series on the research findings of its Leadership and Governance Centre a topic that arose from its recent experiences in leadership succession. In the aftermath of Abdulrasheed Na’Allah’s five-year tenure as Vice-Chancellor of the institution ending in mid-2024, the university would go through the next year and a half without a substantive chief executive. In the twilight of his tenure as Vice-Chancellor, Na’Allah was indeed taken to court by some academics in the institution, over an internal council election. Aisha Sani Maikudi and Mathew Adamu, both professors at the institution, took turns to steer the ship of the system, while the Federal Government, the university’s proprietor, shopped for Na’Allah’s replacement. Such was the level of leadership uncertainty that engulfed the university for nearly two years, threatening the gains of preexisting stability.
The reconstitution of the institution’s Governing Council by President Bola Tinubu on 27 May 2025, which saw the installation of Dr Olanrewaju Tejuoso, a member of the eighth Nigerian Senate between 2015 and 2019, as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Council, breathed new life into the institution. Tejuoso, who had served in a similar capacity at the University of Lagos, moved swiftly to restore order in the drifting foremost tertiary institution in the nation’s capital. By 7 November 2025, the Council had identified Hakeem Babatunde Fawehinmi, 56, a Professor of Clinical Anatomy and Biomedical Anthropology, who was Vice-Chancellor of the Nigerian-British University, Oke-Ikpe, Aba, Abia State, as the new chief executive of the university. He took over from Adamu during the 2025 yuletide and has striven to engender rapprochement and cohesiveness amongst various groups and interests in the academic community, and refocus the citadel on its core concerns of learning and research.
Only a handful of technocrats or administrators, perhaps, will be as well-informed, competent, and authoritative to speak on the gamut of education and administration in Nigeria today as Sonny Togo Echono, the multi-faceted professional and systems expert. True, he trained as an architect and once led the umbrella national body of the speciality. The last decade of his life and career has been one of wholesale immersion in educational governance and administration. Before his appointment as Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) by erstwhile President Muhammadu Buhari in 2022, Echono’s last five years as Federal Permanent Secretary, beginning from 2017, were spent in the Federal Ministry of Education. He had barely caught his breath in retirement after a most eventful 35 years in public service, when further national duty beckoned. In his fifth year at the headship of TETFund, his tenure has overseen some of the most profound reforms and developments in the nation’s tertiary institution ecosystem.
Thursday, 18 June 2026, Echono took to the lectern at the University of Abuja to speak on the subject “Leadership Selection Process and Governance of Federal Universities in Nigeria” over the three decades from 1993 to 2024. It was the inaugural edition of a series that would see graduate doctoral researchers share the findings of their research with the broader society. His presentation established a nexus between the leadership selection process and governance outcomes in Nigerian federal universities. Of the 312 universities accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC), at least a quarter (80) are owned by the Federal Government, with enrolment figures running into millions of students. It is therefore a critical segment of the nation’s educational superstructure in the production of educated, trained, and skilled manpower to drive various subsets of the diverse socioeconomy.
Echono noted that, whereas Nigeria had one of Africa’s most developed university systems at independence in 1960, standards had fallen over the years owing to a plethora of factors. Second Republic politics, he observed, indeed engendered ethnicity and a lowering of the lofty standards that had previously characterised the recruitment process for university leadership in the years when Nigeria competed with its peers in the Commonwealth and the world at large. With such parochialism, according to Echono, came deepening localisation, ethnic and religious bigotry, declining academic and research outputs and a growing perception of irrelevance. These have collectively pushed Nigeria down the educational advancement pyramid, where it pathetically ranks 23rd in Africa and 191st globally.
Leadership selection process in federal universities has been tainted by nepotism, corruption, violence, resort to spiritism, trauma, and even the manipulation of extant university regulations. Poor university governance, Echono posited, has manifested in falling academic standards and quality, frequent disruptions in the academic calendar occasioned by industrial actions, the brain drain syndrome, which has cost Nigeria some of its most prized human assets, and reduced global competitiveness. It is common knowledge that the veracity of Nigerian university degrees has been questioned by foreign institutions and that prospective Nigerian postgraduate students are now subjected to prescribed tests and examinations, whereas academic transcripts once sufficed.
Nigeria once produced some of the finest, most iconic university administrators ever and indeed exported expertise to other countries. There were the Kenneth Onwuka Dike, Eni Njoku, Saburi Biobaku, JF Ade-Ajayi, Tekena Tamuno, Adamu Baikie, Oladipo Olujimi Akinkugbe, Iya Abubakar, Grace Alele-Williams, Afolabi Toye, Adeoye Adeniyi, and so on, who could hold their own against the best administrators from Oxford, Harvard or MIT. Donald Ekong was the pioneer Vice-Chancellor of the University of The Gambia between 1999 and 2005, and more recently, Ahmed Adamu was appointed the foundation Vice-Chancellor of the University of Education of The Gambia. Nazmat Surajudeen-Bakinde is the substantive Vice-Chancellor of the University of Applied Science, Engineering and Technology, also in The Gambia.
Emeka Akaezuwa presently serves as Vice-Chancellor of the International University of East Africa in Kampala, Uganda; Eyitope Ogunbodede served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Eswatini before serving in the same position at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, and Babatunde Agboola was also Vice-Chancellor at Gretsa University, Thika, Kenya. Ogechi Agboola is the incumbent Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academics) at the University of Kigali, Rwanda. Ilesanmi Adesida served as Vice-Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States of America between 2012 and 2015, while Charles Egbu made history in November 2020 when he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Leeds Trinity University, becoming the first Black African to lead a mainstream university in the United Kingdom. David Uzo Mba currently serves as Vice-Chancellor of Birmingham City University, also in the United Kingdom.
These appointments highlight the sheer quality of Nigerian academics, as administrator-potentates, and the extensive reach and respect Nigeria enjoys in educational management worldwide. This is the kind of standard Echono wants Nigeria to replicate at home and indeed consolidate for national development. He thus canvassed the establishment of clear guidelines for leadership selection, which should incorporate the enforcement of clear, standardised guidelines in federal universities. This should outline transparent procedures for appointments, qualification criteria, and mechanisms for stakeholder involvement. A full-circle return to holistic merit in the appointment of Vice-Chancellors using criteria such as qualification, scholarship, experience, and integrity, among others, while also ensuring inclusivity and diversity, will salvage governance ethic in our federal universities.
Director of the Abuja Leadership Centre of the institution, Prof. Abdulhamid Ozohu-Suleiman, applauded the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Fawehinmi, chief host of the event, for his focused leadership, which, he noted, has brought peace and stability to the University of Abuja, within just months of his assumption of office. He alluded to Fawehinmi’s open-door management policy and his capacity to give fair hearing to all. He noted that the alumni lecture series aims ‘to expand the banquet for the communion of Town and Gown, and also to reverse the age-long practice of trapping intellectual works in inaccessible bookshelves where they are consigned to the vagaries of the elements and rodents’. Ozohu-Suleiman observed that the innovation ensures that cutting-edge doctoral theses are publicly presented, published and shared with critical stakeholders.
Despite being a workday, Echono commanded a respectable array of dignitaries at the lecture, held in the auditorium of the university’s law faculty. The facility, by some coincidence, was previously rehabilitated by TETFund. Major-General Lawrence Onoja (rtd.), former Military Governor of Plateau and Katsina States; the Member representing the Southwest on the Board of Trustees of TETFund, Sunday Adepoju, who stood in for the Chairman; former Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari; and former member of the House of Representatives and human rights activist, Abdul Oroh, were in attendance.
Prof. Yakubu Aboki Ochefu, Secretary to the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Ochetoha K’Idoma, was represented, as were the Corps Marshal of the Federal Road Safety Corps, Shehu Mohammed; and the Comptroller-General of the Federal Fire Service, Samuel Olumode Adeyemi. The university community participated robustly, with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic), Prof. Rosemary Udeozor, joining other principal officers of the institution, Deans of Faculty, Heads of Departments, Professors, as well as Echono’s project supervisor, Professor Ukerto Gabriel Moti, in gracing the lecture.
Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja
