Retired Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, College of Medicine, University of Lagos (UNILAG), Professor Boniface Oye-Adeniran has warned that the entire eight years of the Buhari presidency may be defined by corruption at the university.
Professor Oye-Adeniran, a former member of the Governing Council of UNILAG between 2017 and 2019, gave the warning against the backdrop of non-issuance of white paper and implementation of the report of the Visitation Panel to the university more than one year after submission of the report.
The Visitation Panel, which submitted its report in June 2021 and had General Martin Luther Agwai (rtd) as Chairman, according to The Premium Times, an online newspaper, detailed fraud allegations against the Vice Chancellor, Professor Toyin Ogundipe.
In its online report, The Premium Times stated “After several months of painstaking investigation, the Agwai-led panel submitted its report to the Ministry of Education, but the federal government has so far failed to disclose the findings of the committee to the public.
“In September 2021, some part of the panel report indicting Mr Ogundipe for executing multi-million procurement fraud and contract splitting was leaked by some newspapers. But Sonny Echono, the then permanent secretary at the education ministry, denied the authenticity of the reports, claiming it was fake. Some members of the panel however told PREMIUM TIMES the leaked report was genuine.
“Since it was partly leaked last year, the education ministry has held on to the original copy of the Agwai-led report and ignored the Freedom of Information (FOI) request filed by this newspaper. Against all odds, PREMIUM TIMES obtained a copy of the document the federal government refused to make public.
“However, our reporting, including reviewing the Agwai-led panel report that the government wants unpublished and speaking with insiders in UNILAG and the ministry of education, showed that the Buhari-led administration is deliberately concealing the panel’s findings from the masses.”
Commenting on this development, in a statement made available to The Lagos Times, Prof. Oye-Adeniran who had petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), accusing the Professor Ogundipe-led management of UNILAG of corruption, said “The Presidency must not allow its tenure to be defined by corruption at UNILAG.
“Its infrastructural development will pale into oblivion if care is not taken to nip the UNILAG corruption issue in the bud. President Muhammadu Buhari must also deal decisively with all other corruption issues playing out in the social, electronic and print media.”
In its own report, published on its website on August 1, 2022, the online newspaper stated: “PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the Agwai-panel report backed the actions taken against Mr Ogundipe in 2020 by the Wale Babalakin-led governing council of the institution, but President Buhari would ignore the recommendation of the panel he had constituted.
“After reviewing several committee reports and petitions accusing the Vice-Chancellor of corporate malfeasance, the presidential panel stated that “Mr Ogundipe and his management ran an opaque administration that hid the finances of the university from the governing council and the body vested in law to be the custodian of those finances”.
“The panel also established that Mr Ogundipe and his team engaged in various acts of contract splitting in their procurement of goods and services for the university.
“For instance, Mr Dagari, the chairman of the committee constituted by the university council in 2018 to review the expenditure of the university, appeared before the Agwai-led panel to present the report that led to the initial sack of Mr Ogundipe.
“The Dagari-led committee had indicted Mr Ogundipe for spending, without due process, N112.4 million on the renovation of his official residence and the living quarters of the bursar, Olalekan Lawal, and the registrar, Oladejo Azeez.
“The committee found that Mr Ogundipe purchased two official vehicles for N52 million, spending far above the university’s tender board limit. He was also said to have spent N57.9 million on estacodes for foreign trips.
“Under the Vice-Chancellor’s watch, the university paid the sum of N2.4 million monthly to Ademola Adeleke, the dean of students affairs, for 17 months. Mr Ogundipe paid Mr Adeleke from May 2017 to September 2018 for an unspecified purpose, the Dagari-led panel said.
“He was also accused of spending N57.2 million on waste management and janitorial services.
“Prof Ogundipe’s defence was carefully studied. He did not deny any of these allegations, and there appears to be no valid justification in law for all his defences,” the Agwai panel report read in parts.
“Corroborating, the immediate past acting director of works in the university, Tunde Oloko, presented a report before the presidential panel indicting Mr Ogundipe for paying over N2 billion to contractors in excess of his approval limit and without the knowledge of the governing council.
“Engineer Oloko alleged that the vice-chancellor directly engaged in contract splitting and frequently got him to sign off on payments where there was either no execution or the execution had not been completed,” the report said. “These allegations are contrary to the Public Procurement Act and the Fiscal Responsibility Act”.
“Another member of the panel set up by the governing council, Eddy Omolehinwa, gave an account of Mr Ogundipe’s misconduct as UNILAG’s Vice-Chancellor while presenting his report at the Agwai-led committee.
“Mr Omolehinwa said under Mr Ogundipe, the UNILAG management budgeted N147 million for all the institution’s departments while twice that amount, a suspicious N300 million, was budgeted for janitorial services for the same period.
“This directly violates Section 7 of the University Act that vests the finances of the University in the Council,” the panel noted.”
In the cocluding part of its online report, The Premium Times stated: “Despite PREMIUM TIMES’ exclusive access to the original copy of the presidential panel report, Ben Goong, the director of press and public relations at the Ministry of Education, denied Mr Ogundipe was found culpable of wrongdoing by the Agwau-led committee.
“He, however, failed to produce a copy of the said report.
“When contacted for comments on the allegations against him, Mr Ogundipe refused to respond to multiple phone calls placed to his line. He also ignored text messages requesting his reaction to the findings in this story.”
