The establishment of the University of Transport in Daura may have been done without due process as it may have been found to break the extant Law that established the Nigerian Institute of Transport Technologies, NITT, Zaria, which in principle prohibits establishment of any other school of Transport.
Decree number 6 of March 14, 1986 had established the NITT, mandating it to train and research on everything that has to do with Transport in Nigeria. The School, this Magazine learnt, has neither been closed down nor has the decree establishing it been amended. This Law is now referred to as Cap 116 of the Federal laws.
“It is one of the 27 research institutions under the Federal ministry of Science and Technology. It is headed by a full-fledged Director General appointed by the federal Government. A federal government owned University of Technology will necessarily have to strip the NIIT of some of its core mandate and this will be illegal, unless the NIIT is scrapped or the Law setting it up is disbanded”, says O’seun Ogunseitan, Science editor of The nation Newspapers.
The Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, has laid the foundation stone for the establishment of a University of Transport in Daura, home town of President Muhammadu Buhari. This has elicited uproar since critics complain of undue concentration of high profile institutions in the small border village. For example, apart from the Transport University, there is also Federal Polytechnic, Daura and Air Force Reference Hospital, Daura.
The Transport University is to cost a whooping $50 million.
No school-or any other thing for that matter, has been established in Ikenne, the home town of Vice president Yemi Osinbajo.
Ikenne was also the home town of late chief Obafemi Awolowo.
