Getting a VC for Ibadan Varsity: The Ugly Politics, By Reuben Abati Who cares whether the VC is an Ibadan indigene or not? The Minister of Education must revisit this issue quickly. If he waits till the end of the tenure of the current Chairman of Council before the University gets a substantive Vice Chancellor, it would be correctly assumed that Abuja has imposed the politics of godfatherism on the country’s premier University. The University’s alumni have also been too quiet. Established in 1948 as a campus of the University College, London, somewhere around Eleiyele in Ibadan, the University of Ibadan, as it later became known when it assumed an independent status in 1962, has the history of Nigeria, its greatness and challenges written into every grain of sand, every piece of grass, every sound in its chambers, the minutest echo in its premises, so much that any encounter with the University of Ibadan is an encounter with a piece of history. It is Nigeria’s first university. It has produced some of the brightest minds that Nigeria can ever boast of, and has served the country as a factory for the training of generations of skilled workers. At the height of its glory, every university in Nigeria was referred to by ordinary people as U.I. – as in U.I. of Nsukka, U.I. of Kano, U.I. of Maiduguri, U.I. of Port Harcourt…