By: Kelvin Chiringa
The battle for the soul of the NUST yesterday played out in the High Court, as Professor Ferdinand Gideon insists that the appointment of Dr Erold Naomab as Vice-Chancellor was unlawful, unfair, irrational and unreasonable.
Prof Gideon, represented yesterday by lawyer, Sisa Namandje, launched the application for an order, essentially reviewing and setting aside the appointment of Dr Naomab. The application itself has been opposed by various university bodies and by Dr Naomab.
The NUST Vice-Chancellor position became vacant in 2018.
However, Naomab’s appointment created an outcry when leaked documents suggested that Gideon had scored the highest amongst the shortlisted candidates.
Professor Gideon is pitted against the chairperson of the council of NUST, chairperson of the joint search committee of the council senate, and the higher education minister.
He decries in his court papers that he has not been appointed NUST Vice-Chancellor despite being a professor, which according to him, is an advantage.
He told the court that he came out top with 58.30%, while Dr Naomab was ranked third with 54.70%.
According to Prof. Gideon, “Had NUST appointed its Vice-Chancellor during that round of recruitment, the applicant would thus have been appointed.”
“The NUST council decided to re-advertise the position at that point. It was after that first recruitment process which was abandoned and in which the applicant was the best-performing candidate, that NUST re-advertised the vacancy for the position of Vice-Chancellor in the media on 21 January 2020.”
Dr Naomab and Prof Gideon (and others) applied for the vacancy of the Vice-Chancellor, and they were the only shortlisted candidates.
They went through a battery of processes, including public interviews, psychometric tests and background checks.
At the end of the process, the university’s council appointed Dr Naomab as the Vice-Chancellor.
Aggrieved by that appointment, Prof Gideon launched this application on an urgent basis for an interdict, which was dismissed, and persisted with the review application, which has now ripened for hearing.
Was Naomab lawfully appointed?
According to Prof. Gideon, “The 1st Respondent’s council, prior to the position’s advertisement, decided that it would be an advantage for a candidate to have a professorial rank. It is common cause that the 5th Respondent does not have that advantage (professorial rank). Yet, despite him losing out to the applicant in both the quantitative and qualitative selection process, he was nevertheless bizarrely appointed.”
For his part, Dr Naomab submitted that the crux of the issue hinges on what the council considered or did not consider in deciding to appoint him.
He said, “At the outset, it should be mentioned that Prof Gideon, in his extensive affidavits filed for record, does not say that Dr Naomab is incompetent to be appointed as Vice-Chancellor of the university, or that the attributes of Dr Naomab make him otherwise unfit for the position. Prof Gideon simply states that he has out-performed Dr Naomab during the selection process, and he should thus have been appointed as the Vice-Chancellor.”
Chiefly, as per Naomab’s argument, a court does not ordinarily interfere in the decision of an administrative body or person.
He said that the university council was presented with the Joint Search Committee of the Council Senate (JSCCS) report, carefully considered all the information at its disposal, and decided to appoint him.
He submitted that what is incumbent is that the council must carefully consider the information at its disposal and then make a decision, as per section (1)(b) of Part Five of the NUST Statutes.
“That is what a reasonable and fair administrative body would do. The NUST Statutes do not require the council to simply rubberstamp the report of the JSCCS, as it seems to be suggested by Prof Gideon. It is required that the JSCCS consider the report and appoint the Vice-Chancellor after that consideration.
“The council and the JSCCS (which recommended Dr Naomab as its preferred candidate) had two candidates to choose from. Both candidates were otherwise competent to be appointed – with the exception of Prof Gideon’s unsupported claims that he supervised a humanely impossible number of PhD and Master’s Degree candidates and other concerns on his background checks – and therefore, the administrative repository of the relevant powers and functions reached a conclusion that a reasonable person could have come to”.
He said that there was more than one possible conclusion (in other words, Prof Gideon could also have been the chosen candidate) or that the court would have come to another decision, is irrelevant.
Naomab concluded by saying that Prof Gideon has not presented an iota of evidence that the appointment of Dr Naomab was irrational insofar as the university is concerned.
“In other words, it has not been suggested in Prof Gideon’s various affidavits filed of record that the appointment of Dr Naomab would not achieve the stated statutory objectives of the university as set out in section 5 or that of the office of the Vice-Chancellor as contemplated in section 13(1) of the NUST Act,” he said.
