Government to reconstitute university councils soon

A member of the Council of State, Mr Francis Nyonyo, has given the strongest assurance yet that the government will soon reconstitute university councils.

He said due diligence needed to be followed, adding that the fact that some governance structures were not yet transparent to facilitate the fast processes was one of the issues accounting for the delay in reconstituting the councils.

“Very soon, the university councils will be reconstituted. ‘Very soon’ means very soon; we will not delay you,” he said.

Mr Nyonyo gave the assurance when he met with the executive members of the University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) at the University of Education, Winneba (UEW) recently.

He explained that although he was not the appointing authority, as a member of the Council of State, he was aware of the actions by the government to put the councils in place.

Concerns

Prior to his assurance, the executive were emphatic in their statements that the delay in reconstituting the university councils was stalling graduation and other university activities.

The National President of UTAG, Dr Harry Agbanu, was of the view that the university councils had to be put in place as a matter of urgency, to ensure the smooth running of the institutions.

He said without the councils, the universities could not operate efficiently, adding that a lot of decisions that should have been made had stalled because they needed the approval of the councils.

Dr Agbanu said there was agitation on many campuses across the country, with some technical universities threatening to embark on strike because of stalled processes in the institutions.

According to him, the universities could not graduate their students, award degrees, promote lecturers, and also make recruitments if their councils were not in place. 

“Six months is too long for the universities to be without councils. We don’t want the serenity of our campuses to be affected in any way,” he said.