The Governing Council
of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN), led by Emmanuel Ukala, a lawyer,
decided to defy a request from Nigeria’s National Human Rights
Commission
(NHRC) for all the documents the University used to exonerate Professor Uche
Modum who was accused of numerous academic forgeries and falsifications of
credentials.
Emmanuel Ukala
Several sources at
the University told SaharaReporters that the Governing Council, at its meeting
on December 1 and 2, 2015 decided to file a lawsuit against the human rights
body.
SaharaReporters
recently disclosed that the Human Rights Commission had questioned the
University Council’s decision to fire Ugochukwu Uche, a former dean of the
Faculty of Business at UNN, who accused Mrs. Modum, a former Commissioner with
the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, of falsifying her credentials in
order to obtain promotion to full professorship.
Our sources revealed
that Mr. Ukala specifically informed the Council that he had hired three Senior
Advocates, including Ken Njemanze and D.C. Nwigwe, to sue the NHRC over the
agency’s directive.
The controversy
dates back to 2008 when Mr. UgochukwuUche, during a routine exercise as the
then Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration, compared Mrs. Modum's
official CV with her 1995 professorial appraisal form and discovered
significant discrepancies. Specifically, Mrs. Modum’s 1995 appraisal papers
claimed that she had authored two books (one published and one accepted for
publication), fifteen journal articles (six published and nine accepted for
publication) and three book chapters (one published and two accepted for
publication). Mr. Uche discovered that, by 2008, none of the nine journal
articles and two book chapters that Mrs. Modum claimed had been accepted for
publication in 1995 had been published. Astonishingly, most of the papers were
included in Mrs. Modum's 2008 CV as having been published in entirely different
journals where they did not exist.
These discrepancies
and false claims raised concerns about the authenticity of the acceptance
letters Mrs. Modum had submitted for her professorial appraisal in 1995. Mr.
Uche also pointed out that Mrs. Modum used the forged 2008 CV to gain Ph.D.
supervision status at UNN.
In her three
responses to Mr. Uche's query, Mrs. Modum, neither denied the discrepancies nor
provided a clear explanation. Mr. Uche then officially reported the matter to
the UNN authorities, in accordance with the UNN policy governing such
discovery.
Curiously, in 2011,
a UNN Council Committee ostensibly investigated Mrs. Modum and gave her a clean
bill. In addition, the Council accused Mr. Uche of “character assassination
without concrete facts” and ordered him to apologize to Mrs. Modum. This was
despite the fact that Mr. Uche had showed evidence that, even after he exposed
the forged CV in 2008, the Registrar of UNN still circulated essentially the
same CV to the entire UNN community in 2009 when Mrs. Modum unsuccessfully
contested for the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Unlike the 2008 CV, which
listed 17 “published journal articles” (many of which do not exist), Mrs.
Modum’s 2009 CV simply claimed that she had published more than 25 journal
articles, even though she craftily avoided listing the said publications.
Mr. Uche protested
UNN’s handling of his findings and formally requested for a copy of the
investigation report and supporting documents to enable him to understand the
basis for the Council’s exoneration of Mrs. Modum and insistence that he
apologize to her. The Council formally denied his request.
In July 2011, Mr.
Uche's lawyer wrote to the Council submitting evidence from a US-based attorney
that confirmed that, apartfrom using fraudulent nonexistent publications to
obtain promotions and other benefits, Mrs. Modum had also forged the acceptance
letter of a journal, Management Accounting (now Strategic Finance), which
purportedly accepted two of her papers for publication in 1992. In addition,
the document exposed that Mrs. Modum had used different dates of birth
andfalsely claimed to have worked in a nonexistent US auditing firm.
When UNN authorities
rejected and returned the letter, Mr. Uchewrote an open letter bringing his
travails to the attention of the entire Council. In 2013, after a Council
Committee set up to investigate the numerous complaints against the then Vice
Chancellor, B.N. Okolo, unsuccessfully tried to force him to plead with the
Council to “temper justice with mercy,” Mr. Uchepetitioned the National Human
Rights Commission (NHRC) arguing that it was wrong for the University to find
him guilty when he was only a witness in its investigation of Mrs. Modum. He
also requested to be formally tried in accordance with the regulations of UNN
to enable him to demonstrate Mrs. Modum’s fraud beyond doubt.
UNN ignored several
requests from the NHRC to submit its investigation reports on the case to
enable the human rights agency to determine whether Mr. Uche was given fair
hearing. Instead, Mr. Ukala compelled members of the Council to support his
decision to sack Mr. Uche. NHRC immediatelysuspended the sack and gave the UNN
authorities two weeks to submit the said documents. In reaction, Mr. Ukala
disclosed to the Council that he would sue the NHRC.
A source at UNN told
SaharaReporters, “The critical question is,why is the UNN Council determined to
keep secret itsinvestigation report that cleared Professor Modum?”
A former Council
member at the time of the 2011 investigations told SaharaReporters that the
Ukala-led Council “might be afraid that releasing the report will expose and
ridicule the powerful Council members who colluded to subvert justice.” He added
that the guilty members included two former deputy governors, Benjamin Elue (a
deputy governor of Delta State under former Governor James Ibori) and Patrick
Adaba (deputy governor of Kogi State under the late Governor Abubakar Audu),
and Mrs. O.A. Brown of the Federal Ministry of Education. The source accused
the investigation committee of “simply citing and accepting the documents that
Professor Modum submitted during her 1995 professorial appraisal asevidence
that the nonexistent publications exist. How can it be explained that Mrs.
Modum's 'publications' which the council committee reported to exist are merely
articles with acceptance letters dated in the nineties? More than twenty years
later, none of the claimed articles has been published?”
Ironically, the
so-called acceptance letters included one purportedly issued by Management
Accounting (now Strategic Finance), which the journal’s editor disavowed in
writing, stating that the journal never wrote such a letter. The Committee
report also falsely claimed that some of the journal articles Mrs. Modum listed
as accepted for publication in 1995 had been published. But a simple search
shows that such articles were never published.
In her defense, Mrs.
Modum had stated that all her papers ostensibly accepted for publication but
never published after 20 years were a mystery to her, but insisted that they
were all accepted.
In the bid to save
Mrs. Modum, the report further stated that her CV that was posted on the UNN’s
website was a draft that was submitted by her department without her consent.
The report was however silent on how several nonexistent publications, with
journal titles, dates, volume, issue and page numbers entered her draft CV.
Evidence that Mrs. Modum used the same forged CV to gain UNN approval to
supervise PhD students wasdisregarded.
According to our
source, several Council members resisted subsequent attempts by former Vice
Chancellor B.N. Okolo to force Mr. Uche to apologize to Mrs. Modum. One Council
member told SaharaReporters, “Some of us are surprised that Mr. Ukala, a SAN,
has allowed himself to be dragged into this mess.”
A professor at UNN
also revealed that “even Professor Malachy Okwueze, a former Deputy Vice
Chancellor of UNN who was on the Committee, has expressed surprise at the sack
action.”
A former Deputy Vice
Chancellor of the university, Mrs. Rich Umeh, reportedly took exception to the
underhand dealings of the Council. “Professor Umeh recused herself from the
proceedings,” a source said, adding that Mrs. Umeh “subsequently refused to
sign the report by the Council, defying extensive pressure.” The members of the
investigation Committee who signed the investigation report were Mrs. Grace
Offorma and Mrs. M.U. Eke, the secretary.
SaharaReporters had
earlier reported that after the Ukala-led Council ignored letters from the NHRC
and gave Mr. Uche two weeks to apologize or be sanctioned, the whistleblowing
professor petitioned the Federal House of Representatives. The legislative body
immediately asked the University to maintain the status quo and settle the
matter within one month, failing which Reps would hold a public hearing on the
complaint. In fact, the House fixed September 17, 2014 for the public hearing.
Panicked by the prospects of a public hearing on this grand cover up of
academic fraud, UNN Vice Chancellor Benjamin Ozumba on July 25, 2014 wrote to
the House stating that the matter was handled by a previous Council. He however
informed the House that, because of its intervention, UNN Council had suspended
further action on the matter. He then pleaded for more time to enable the
Council to review the matter. The House of Reps approved the request.
However, a source at
UNN told our correspondent that the request for time was a deceptive ploy.
“Once the tenure of the seventh National Assembly ended, the UNN Council sacked
Professor Uche without recourse to the House or making known the findings of
its investigations,” said the source.
At a September 29,
2015 meeting, Mr. Ukala railroaded the Council to sack Mr. Uche, despite
protests by some members of the Council. He insisted that a previous Council
had decided on the matter. A source privy to the deliberations of the Governing
Council told SaharaReporters that when the minutes of the saidmeeting were taken
to Mr. Ukala for approval, he personally rewrote the section on the sacking of
Mr. Uche to give the impression that the matter was extensively debated and
decided by a consensus in the Council. A Council member told our correspondent,
“Although everybody present knew what happened, nobody spoke up as the deed
[the firing of Professor Uche] had already been done”.
The source said Mr.
Ukala was visibly upset as he discussed the NHRC letter suspending the sack of
Mr. Uche. “He cursed the human rights commission and told the Council that UNN
will never submit the requested documents but will instead take the NHRC to
court to challenge its jurisdiction and powers to protest the conduct of UNN,
another government agency,” said a source.
The Council’s meeting
on December 1 and 2 2015 was the first time any of the several NHRC letters was
brought to the attention of the entire Council of UNN.
In a recent
interview with a local newspaper in Enugu, Starlite, published on November 9,
2015, UNN VC, Mr. Ozumba, wasasked why he never informed the UNN Council about
the September 14, 2015 NHRC letter which defined the meaning of fair hearing
and also demanded that the University submit all its investigation documents on
the Mrs. Modum fraud investigation. Mr. Ozumba responded that he was overseas
when the letter from the National Human Rights Commission came, adding that, by
the time he came back to Nigeria, the University Council had wound up its
sitting and had taken a decision.
But two members of
the Council confirmed to SaharaReporters that the VC lied about being out of
the country, adding that he was present at the meeting when the firing of Mr.
Uche was discussed. “He had a golden opportunity to tell members of the council
about the due process guideline from the human rightsagency,” said one source.
He added that the VC’s silence was “recklessness of the highest order.”
When asked by the
same newspaper whether he had taken time time to investigate the allegations
against Mrs. Modum, the VC responded, “I have no knowledge of how to conduct
investigations. Investigations are better left for investigative journalists
and other relevant agencies saddled with such duties.”
Source: Saharareporters
