The Senate of the University of Calabar (UNICAL) has suspended the Acting Dean of the Faculty of Law, Prof. Michael Takim Otu, over alleged irregularities in the handling of the 2025 Nigerian Law School mobilisation exercise.
The suspension was announced on 22 January 2026 at the University’s 253rd Senate meeting, following the submission of a report by a fact-finding committee set up to investigate multiple petitions arising from the mobilisation process.
At the centre of the controversy was the exclusion of several final-year law students with strong academic records from the mobilisation list. Documents presented before Senate showed that students with CGPAs of 4.34, 4.32 and 4.12 were omitted despite meeting the Faculty’s long-standing merit-based criteria.
When queried, the Acting Dean was reportedly unable to offer a clear or consistent explanation for the exclusions. The affected students were left without mobilisation for several months, prompting petitions to the Public Complaints Commission and the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Offiong E. Offiong, alleging arbitrary decision-making and deviation from established procedures.
The matter first came before Senate in December 2025, leading to the constitution of a fact-finding committee. By the time the committee submitted its report in January 2026, further allegations had emerged.
Additional petitions were filed by students who had initially been mobilised for law school. They alleged that after downloading, completing and submitting their law school forms through the Faculty, the Acting Dean later declined to forward the forms and attempted to replace them through a supplementary list, citing that their results were not ready.
However, the committee reportedly found this justification to be inaccurate. Evidence before Senate showed that the students’ results had been approved well before the mobilisation exercise, undermining the basis for the supplementary list.
The committee’s findings also raised concerns about lack of transparency and due process. It was alleged that the Acting Dean could not satisfactorily explain the criteria used in compiling the mobilisation list and that the exercise was not routed through the Faculty Law School Committee, the body statutorily responsible for oversight of the process.
Investigations further revealed that UNICAL has an approved mobilisation quota of 170 students, with an established practice of presenting candidates strictly in order of academic merit, starting from the highest CGPAs, to minimise discretion and prevent abuse.
It also emerged that prior to Senate’s intervention, the Vice-Chancellor personally visited the Nigerian Law School to make representations on behalf of students who had been unfairly excluded, highlighting the seriousness of the situation and the institutional concern it generated.
Following deliberations on the committee’s report, Senate suspended Prof. Otu with immediate effect and referred the matter to the University Disciplinary Committee for further investigation.
In the interim, Prof. Michael Ibanga has been appointed Acting Dean of the Faculty of Law, with a mandate to restore order, ensure strict adherence to due process, and rebuild confidence in the Faculty’s administrative systems.