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.
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Mr. Ademiluyi filed the action after an FOI request for the report of the Special Visitation Panel to the Federal College of Education (Technical), Akoka, Lagos, was not responded to within the stipulated seven days under the FOI Act.
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 obtain the visitation panel report instituted following the crisis that engulfed the college in May 2024.
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.
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 his official residence over his tenure of office.
They insisted that with the amendment of the Colleges of Education Act, 2023, which introduced a single five-year term of office for provosts and other principal officers, the tenure of Mr. Azeez had ended on 26 May.
However, the provost maintained that he was appointed for a first term of four years in 2019 and, having been duly reappointed by the institution’s governing council in 2023, had already commenced his second term on 27 May 2023, before the amended Act was signed into law on 12 June 2023.
The then Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, confirmed the provost’s position that he had already resumed for another four-year term.
However, 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.
In response to the unrest, the Minister of Education, Mr. Alausa, met with the warring parties and 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 a former Governor of Bauchi State, Mohammed Abubakar, SAN, 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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