A legal practitioner, Ayodele Ademiluyi, the lead partner at Newworth LLP, has instituted a Freedom of Information (FOI) Action against the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, at the Federal High Court in Lagos.
Mr Ademiluyi filed the action after an FOI request for the report of the Special Visitation Panel to Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka, Lagos was not responded to within the stipulated seven days under the FOI law.
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The FOI request was filed on 2 March and submitted at the minister’s office on 6 March, according to documents seen by this newspaper.
The legal practitioner seeks to get the visitation panel report instituted following the crisis that engulfed the college in May 2024.
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Although the visitation panel had long concluded its work, the crisis has yet to be resolved, and the education minister has refused to make the findings of the committee public.
FCET’s unresolved crisis
The crisis at the institution began on 27 May, when workers, under the umbrella of “concerned staff” and led by the leadership of the Senior Staff Union of Colleges of Education (SSUCOEN), FCET chapter, locked up the office of the Provost of the College, Wahab Azeez, and issued him a notice to quit from his official residence over his tenure of office.
They insisted that with the amendment of the Educational Colleges Act 2023, which introduced a five-year single term of office for provosts and other principal officers of the colleges, the tenure of Mr Azeez had ended on 26 May.
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But the provost said he was appointed for the first term of four years in 2019 and that, having been duly reappointed by the institution’s governing council in 2023, he already resumed his second term in office on 27 May 2023 before the amended act was signed into law on 12 June 2023.
The then education minister, Tahir Mamman, confirmed the provost’s position that he had already resumed for another four-year term in office.
But the protests continued and turned violent on 30 July 2024 when some workers and students reportedly attacked the Chairperson of the Governing Council of the institution, Olatunde Adenuga, and other council members, vandalising cars and other property worth millions of naira. More than 30 people were arrested that day, according to the Lagos State Police Command.
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In response to the unrest, the education minister, Mr Alausa, met with the warring parties. He also set up a special visitation panel on 29 July 2025 to investigate the crisis and recommend solutions, but its report has not been made public months after its completion.
The 10-member panel, chaired by the former Governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, was mandated to examine all the issues plaguing the institution and recommend solutions.
However, the failure to release the report and implement its recommendations has prolonged uncertainty at the college and undermined confidence in the government’s ability to resolve institutional disputes.
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