By Correspondent
Professor Michael Takim Otu, who has been the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Law since December 2025, has been suspended by the University of Calabar (UNICAL) Senate.
Following the submission of a fact-finding committee’s report on grievances pertaining to the 2025 Nigerian Law School mobilization procedure at the Faculty of Law, the suspension took place at the Senate’s 253rd meeting on January 22, 2026.
Evidence and worries that the approach departed from accepted practices intended to guarantee equity and merit-based selection served as the foundation for the Senate’s decision.
According to the committee’s findings, there were several petitions and issues with the way Professor Otu conducted the Law School mobilization.
High-achieving final-year law students who met merit requirements were excluded from the law school mobilization list, among other specific difficulties.
The committee discovered that despite meeting the faculty’s merit-based requirements for law school placement, a number of final-year law students with extremely high CGPAs (e.g., 4.34, 4.32, 4.12) were left off the Nigerian Law School mobilization list.
When questioned about this exclusion, he was unable to give a convincing, consistent, or open reason for why these students were not included in the mobilization list he put together.
The committee discovered that the Acting Dean later neglected to send the completed law school forms to the proper authorities, despite the fact that several students who were initially on the mobilization list submitted them through the faculty.
An effort was instead made to substitute a “supplementary” list for the original list on the grounds that some results were not yet available. The committee determined that this was untrue, since the affected students had approved results,
The fact-finding committee also discovered that the Faculty Law School Committee, which is responsible for supervising and guaranteeing due process in the compilation of the list, was not consulted during the mobilization process.
According to the report, UNICAL was embarrassed by the circumstance to the point where the Vice Chancellor personally met with representatives of the Nigerian Law School to speak up for students who had been wrongfully left out.
Due to these conclusions, the Senate immediately suspended Professor Otu and sent him to the University Disciplinary Committee for more investigation and potential action.
After Professor Otu was suspended, Prof. Michael Ibanga was named Acting Dean of the Faculty of Law. Prof. Ibanga is expected to carry out his responsibilities with diligence by managing the faculty for maximum production and making sure that the departments under his supervision adhere to the university’s established norms and regulations.
During his stay, the new Acting Dean is also expected to reconcile all groups, submit results on time, and bring stability and sanity back to the faculty.
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