This write-up is meant to guide those who are unqualified to be Vice-Chancellors of public universities by reason of age; thus cannot serve a full four (4) year term before attaining the statutory retirement age of sixty (60) years, but who nonetheless, wish to become Vice-Chancellors at all cost.
This is solely in respect of public universities, since the situation in private universities, is likely to be different.
To start with, the aspirant must be a ‘nobody’ in the university set-up; then cleverly worm your way to win the heart of an incoming Vice-Chancellor (VC) through sweet-talk and pure lies.
Whether by dint of hard work or whatever, the aspirant is appointed Dean of a Faculty, and subsequently gets promoted to the rank of Associate Professor.
Having now been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, the aspirant is now qualified to contest for the office of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Pro-VC).
One then gets nominated to run for the office of Pro-VC, and goes on to win the election, and per constitutional requirement, the University Council appoints you.
Following appointment into office by your University Council as Pro-VC, you then start planning to get appointed as VC, even though you have just a couple of years left in active service.
You first approach your boss, thus the VC, to convince him to persuade the University Council to appoint you without a formal advert, with the main objective of looting the University funds, if successful. Upon being unsuccessful in this regard, you then form an alliance with other like-minded persons and together with them, attempt to sweet-talk your VC into agreeing with you to create, loot and share the University funds.
With your boss (VC) turning down this selfish and unreasonable request, you then conspire with a few evil, vicious, arrogant and greedy people, and solemnly declare to get rid of your boss at all cost. Some people with stomachs protruding about a mile in front of them, and yearning to fill their bottomless stomachs with stolen public funds, would then emerge as ring leaders.
The next line of action would be to consult shrines, voodoo, mallams, pastors and other evil and devilish agents to kill your boss, in order to pave way for you to easily take over the University by hook or crook. This however turns out to be a fiasco!!
The VC is hospitalized, and since you are the one behind his unfortunate predicament, you deliberately fail to text or call him to find out his condition. Fact is, your shrines and other devilish agents have assured you that your VC is dead, so why bother to find out how a ‘dead’ person is doing?
Sadly, your VC stubbornly refuses to die, and is discharged from the hospital and returns to work. So what next?
In conjunction with a known crook, a bent traditional ruler, a stomach man and some other ungrateful people, you scheme to deny the rightful successor to the VC, the fruits of his labour through the courts.
You first of all ‘cook’ a court summons and have it served on a collaborator who in actual fact, engineered it. He receives the summons and zips his lips until the University Council meets, where he pulls a fast one on a majority of the Council Members. This effectively puts breaks on the process to appoint the successor.
Two (2) options maybe opened towards the tail end for the Pro-VC to secure eventual victory.
First is to brew another court process, and serve it on a co-conspirator who is authorized to receive the University’s court summons and he keeps mute over it as usual and spring a surprise on some Members of the University Council at its next meeting to restrain the Governing Council (injunction) from extending the tenure of the outgoing VC until a successor is appointed.
The second option is to deliberately refuse to convene a Council meeting before the tenure of the outgoing VC terminates, with the false hope that you will automatically succeed the out gone VC.
This scenario may succeed under a Monarchical system, but not under a Constitutional set-up like all public universities in Ghana, where the enabling Acts of all the public universities empower their Governing Councils to appoint most top officials of the Universities, including the VC.
For example, the Vice President of the Republic of Ghana does not automatically succeed the President if the President for whatever reason is unable to perform the functions of the President. There has to be a formal swearing-in.
Similarly, the Pro-VC, MUST be appointed by the University Council to act as VC until a substantive VC is appointed.
Any of the above options may effectively pave the way for you to take over and plunder the funds of the University for the benefit of your common criminal friends out there, some persons with stomachs the size of football pitches, and you will now be on course to retire in a couple of years time, as a billionaire!!
At this juncture, the outgoing VC should not expect any form of camaraderie from most of his management team, since it is now vividly clear that his deputy is coasting to victory.
The Pro-VC is basically now the man of the moment, and all allegiances switches to him. Who wants to be left out in sharing the booty?
For example, most of the management team members may turn up for meetings such as Entity Committee, after having met privately to strategize and plan an ambush against the outgoing VC.
In addition, they would only show up for meetings that they stand to benefit directly, financially or otherwise.
It is submitted that, the above, if adhered to strictly, would result in public officers with a couple of years left to retire, to steal as much as they can from some public universities funds and retire with stomachs the size of airport runways, and not definitely with stomachs the size of miniature football pitches.
Alhassan Salifu Bawah
(son of an upright peasant farmer)