Anxiety as NUC begins probe of Okojie’s tenure
.Appoints auditors over alleged violation of due process
.To unravel over invoicing, inflation of contracts, frivolous spendings
The National Universities Commission (NUC) has appointed a team of auditors to probe the tenure of former Executive Secretary of the commission, Prof Julius Okojie, over what it called ’’suspected breaches of due process and inflation of contract sums’’.
Though the development is said to be causing some disquiet, an official in the commission’s audit department also confided in The Daily Times that the team of auditors have already began work on the matter.
The official, who sought anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter, added that the auditors are currently perusing contract documents and inviting members of staff especially those who played key role in the finances of the former administration, for questioning.
Top on the level of accusation against Okojie is the inflation of contract costs particularly on electronic advertising charges, payments for publications and projects, eastacode and allowances drawn during inspection of new varsities and other issues.
Okojie’s tenure at the NUC were not without controversial decisions, which often led to collisions with professional associations like Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), office of the Accountant General of the Federation, existing old universities over accreditation of courses and programmes.
For instance, at the twilight of his tenure in December 2013, a major blunder by one of the consultants handling the Federal Government’s Integrated Personnel & Payroll Information System (IPPIS), resulted in the overpayment of over N220million to 213 staff of the NUC.
Though a query was issued to the erring consultant from the office of the Accountant General of the Federation (AGF), the blunder stirred massive confusion between top management and the affected workers on how to recover and refund the money to government coffers.
Some of the workers who spent part of the money during the Yuletide festivities were threatened with sack or suspension of salary payment, as the authorities vowed to take drastic sanctions against those who failed to refund the money.
Again in 2016, the President of the Nigeria Academy of Science, who was a former Vice-Chancellor of the Redeemer’s University and distinguished professor of virology, Oyewale Tomori, at the convocation lecture of the University of Abuja, questioned the integrity of NUC accreditation of courses in the country’s universities, describing the process as being embedded in corruption, as he claimed that “brown envelopes”, are often doled out to the accreditation panelists by universities.
He was quoted as saying that “When there are allegations that some of the people who conduct accreditation exercise in the name of (the) NUC receive brown envelopes, the NUC will ask: Are those who give or take the envelopes not your colleagues? But the NUC forgets one thing, that the accreditation bears ‘NUC’s accreditation’ all true, of course’’.
The Daily Times also recalls that in September 2016, members of ASUU had demanded the removal of Okojie, declaring that he could not absolve himself and the commission from the rot in Nigerian universities. The union also insisted on scrapping of the commission.
The NUC, according to ASUU, failed to reposition Nigerian universities as shown by the NEEDS assessment report, which the union maintained, was carried out by genuine academics, pointing out that its (NEEDS) report contradicted NUC’s accreditation exercises, which gave ‘controversial’ clean bill of health to most universities through what it called ‘magomago accreditation.’
Augustine Okezie, Abuja
