The University of Ghana has been sued over the way it is going about processes to recruit a new Vice-Chancellor.
One Justice Patrick Ennin is of the position that a search committee put together to search for the new Vice-Chancellor has been illegally constituted.
He is therefore asking the High Court to place an injunction on the process as a first step towards nullifying the entire process by the Committee which was established in September 2020.
Per the school’s statutes, ‘one year before the post of Vice-Chancellor becomes vacant, or when the post is vacant, the Council shall appoint a search party or committee to propose a successor for the Council’s consideration.’
The tenure of the current Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ebenezer Oduro Owusu will run out in the next two months but still, the Committee has not readied his successor even though the Committee had in January announced that it had received applications for t5he job.
The applicants include Prof. Nana Aba Appiah Amfo and Professor Felix Asante, both Pro Vice-Chancellors in charge of Academic and Student Affairs, and Research, Innovation and Development respectively.
The others were Director of ISSER Prof. Peter Quartey, Dean of Students, Prof Godfred Bokpin, Prof. Daniel Ofori and Prof. Samuel Cudjoe. The seventh applicant was a faculty member with Pakistan’s IQRA University.
With the tone of the application by Mr. Ennin, it is feared that if he is successful the University will be thrown into a leadership crisis since the mandate of its Governing Council also expired on May 31, 2021, with a substantive one yet to be inaugurated.
It has been reported that the search Committee has gone very far in its work to find a new VC for the school but Mr. Ennin’s suit faults the Committee itself.
The plaintiff alleges that the ‘‘inclusion of Mrs. Vesta A. Nunoo and Prof. Baffuor Agyeman-Duah as two of the three representatives of the University Council on the Search Committee, was in breach of prevailing law as their tenure, as members of the council, had expired prior to their nomination.”
He argues that, ‘‘as of July 31, 2020, the tenure of many members of the University Council had expired and the continued membership and inclusion in the work of the University Council of these members renders the activities of the Council, post terminal dates null and void and of no legal effect whatsoever.’’