Host Community Leaders Threaten to Shutdown LASUED for Relocating Courses to Epe 

The host community of the newly approved Lagos State University of Education, LASUED, in Otto/Ijanikin handed down a seven days ultimatum to the State Government to return to the status quo some courses removed from the Oto main campus from the school’s satellite campus in Epe.

The community, during a press briefing at the weekend, also threatened that failure to do so would result in the shutdown of the university’s main campus in Ijanikin after seven days, starting from last Friday.

They alleged that the school removed 40 of the about 60 main courses from the LASUED Epe Annex of the institution, despite having little or no facility for the courses.

The protesting residents said some courses the state removed from the main campus include those run by the College of Humanities Education, College of Science Education, College of Information and Technology Education and College of Management and Social Science Education.

According to the Spokesman of the community, Dawodu Avoseh, the courses moved to Epe were to be at the Otto campus as directed by the National University Commission (NUC).

He noted that those courses made the school gain approval following the community’s struggle for the institution to be established in the area to drive the development of the community.

Avoseh emphasised: “The removal of the major course that gave the university its status to its Epe campus is a disservice to the people that give out the land for the school to be built.

“The school is virtually empty without those courses. The community that benefits from students’ rents are the worst hit in the whole thing, as the houses built for students are now empty.

On behalf of the host community, he appealed to the state Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to come to their aid. “We know such removal was done without his consent.”

Avoseh added that the community had written a series of protest letters to the governor but regretted that some persons prevented them from getting to the governor.

The spokesman noted that the community had the consent of the Obas in the area to issue a seven-day notice beginning from February 18 to the state, after which the people would shut down the school from operations.

We want to know what we have done to the state government; he continued, to deserve this punishment. “We have been begging the state government to return the courses, but we are unhappy.

“We have written a series of letters to the government about our grievances. We wrote another letter on the instruction of the Aworis oba to the state government, and the letters didn’t see the light of day. The courses should be reversed. We want to partake in the school’s governing council also,” he decried.

He demanded: “We also demand forty per cent in employment and the school fee. We want the government to consider us in whatever they want to do.

“We don’t want our children to suffer. We don’t have a source of income. All we depend on is just the house rent the students are paying through accommodation, and that’s the reason we are pained.”