OBJ demands apology from NOUN VC
… says ‘My service at NOUN is pro bono’
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has kicked against a newspaper report credited to the Vice Chancellor of the National Open University, which says that he receives a salary of N40,000 as a part time lecturer in the university.
He described the statement as mischievous and in bad taste.
A statement signed by the Special Assistant to former President Obasanjo on Media, said, “The attention of the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has been drawn to a newspaper report, published specifically on Page 8 of the PUNCH newspaper of Wednesday, March 20, 2019 with the headline ‘Obasanjo earns N40,000 as NOUN lecturer -VC.’
Ordinarily, this would have been an unnecessary exercise, if it had been the usual shenanigans of the media to sell their newspapers, but the very clear quotation of the Vice-Chancellor, Prof Abdalla Adam on the headline made this clarification imperative and to set the records straight on His Excellency’s engagement with the University.
“In putting the records in the right perspective, His Excellency wishes to draw the attention of the Vice-Chancellor to his letter dated 12 April 2018, which was written to the University Registrar, Mr. Felix Edoka, when the Council offered him a Part-Time appointment as an Instructional/Tutorial Facilitator and Project Supervisor in the Faculty of Arts at the Abeokuta Study Centre.
Specifically, in Paragraph 3 of the letter, President Obasanjo wrote: ‘I will gladly undertake any of the functions mentioned in paragraph two of your letter pro bono and I hope that the functions will be flexible enough to accommodate my rather tight schedule.’ (See attached a copy of the letter).”
2The former President affirmed that he had not received any dime either as salaries or otherwise from the University and was not planning to do such now or forever, as stated in his letter that the appointment was received with “pleasure and duty to give back to others out of what God and NOUN have given me.”
Akinyemi said the publication, which had generated mixed reactions from the general public and calls from far and near, was, “to say the least, embarrassing, uncharitable, mischievous and in bad taste, with immediate demand for a retraction and apology from the Office of the Vice Chancellor.”
