By joshua 
FUOYE VC Selection process was thorough, rigorous, fully digitalised – Ndoma-Egba
The Pro-Chancellor/Chairman Governing Council of Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Distinguished Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, SAN, has said that the just concluded Vice-Chancellorship selection process, that led to the emergence of Professor Joshua Olalekan Ogunwole as the new Vice-Chancellor of the 14-year-old institution of higher learning, was fully digitalized and conducted with utmost transparency and thoroughness.
Ndoma-Egba, a former Senate Leader and erstwhile Board Chairman Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), who directly supervised the selection process in his capacity as the Governing Council Chairman, gave the indication in an interaction with newsmen in Abuja.
According to him, “The exercise that has resulted in the appointment (of Professor Joshua Olaleken Ogunwole), was the first fully digitalized online exercise in the Nigerian University system.
“The process was fully digitalised. The applications were launched online, and the assessments were done by the system. However, to ensure transparency and accuracy, we still carried out a manual review. For instance, if the system showed that an applicant had two fellowships, we verified manually to confirm the claim.
“We started the process with an announcement in February 2025 to commence the succession programme for a new Vice-Chancellor. By law, we are required to advertise the position in major newspapers for six weeks, and that was strictly followed.
“Every line of the advertisement was debated and approved by the council before publication. At the end of the six weeks, we received 64 online applications.
“When we had the final six names, we immediately contacted the Department of State Services (DSS) in Ekiti for the screening of the shortlisted candidates. After a very thorough exercise, the Council approved the most suitable and qualified candidate.
“We emerged from the process with Professor Ogunwole Joshua Olalekan as the fifth Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti.”
The Pro-Chancellor noted that the working document adopted by the Governing Council for the entire exercise that led to the appointment of the new VC gave no room for discretion.
He said: “The long and short of this, is that the process left little or no room for discretion. And I want to say with all confidence that if you give out the template we adopted to any person in the street to conduct the exercise, and the person applied the template strictly, the result will be the same. So, there was no allowance for discretion from what we set out to do. Therefore, the issue of preferred candidate was not there, because the scores were objective. The online systems well sorted out and we also did the manual verification.”
Professor Ogunwole, the incoming FUOYE VC is a renowned soil scientist, astute administrator, former VC of Bowen University and currently FUOYE’s DVC Partnerships, Research, Innovation and Linkages.
He will officially take over on February 11, 2026 from the outgoing VC, Professor Abayomi Sunday Fasina, the man that is widely believed to have significantly turned around the fortunes of FUOYE and taken the institution to a greater height of growth and development.