From Henry Ibya, Makurdi
Governing Council of Benue State University, BSU, Makurdi, led by Mr Paul Chukwuma has ordered with immediate effect, the suspension of the Bursar, Mr Amos Egwurube, and the Director of Information and Communication Technology, ICT, Mr Terna Abuul.
According to sources, Egwurube was suspended for alleged financial infractions, while Abuul was accused of collaborating to destroy financial records to defraud the university.
The sources equally revealed that on assumption of office, the governing council, in a bid to start on a clean note, ordered for a forensic audit to ascertain university transactions.
He said at the end of the exercise, it was discovered that the two officials had cornered over N2 billion through school fees padding.
According to the insider who pleaded anonymity, the indicted officials having discovered that they were implicated by the findings of the forensic audit and the consequences that would follow the alleged offense, used the only alternative defense mechanism at their disposal which is to deliberately crash the university portal, with the aim to destroy information about the university including financial records and transactions together with the discoveries of the forensic audit committee.
The source lamented that crashing the portal which might be to the advantage of the two suspended staff to assist them cover up their illegal transactions, had caused a lot of inconveniences to the university community and also led to the postponement of examinations more than two times, a situation that almost tampered with the academic calendar with examinations for the semester also affected.
The source revealed that each time the university portal collapsed, it was obvious that the two staff would allegedly benefit, smiling to the bank at the expense of poor students.
He alleged that each time the portal crashes, N20 million contract would be awarded for refixing and the amount paid to the contractor upfront.
He also revealed that the ICT director, suspected to be behind the crash would quickly suggest to the management a particular consultant to be engaged for the repair, expressing shock that as the same contractor handled the repair, the system would collapse almost immediately while management would still give approval for the same contractor another time the portal crashes, lamenting that this attitude had made the university to lose huge sums of money.
A circular signed by the Secretary of the university governing council, Mr Aondona Tor- Anyiin, copied to all deans of faculties and heads of department, directed the ad-hoc committee headed by the deputy vice chancellor (academics) to determine the school fees owed by students between 2019/2020, 2020/2021, 2021/2022, 2022/2023 and 2023/2024 sessions respectively.
The governing council also directed the ad-hoc committee to compel deans of faculties and heads of departments to furnish the committee with relevant information in line with the attached template, urging those concerned to forward both hard and soft copies of the needed information to the deputy vice chancellor academics.
Reacting to the development on telephone yesterday, Abdul confirmed the suspension, but denied conniving with anybody to defraud the university.
He explained that the portal had different modules as their responsibility entailed.
He said as director of ICT, he only has access to students registration, course allocation and information on who had paid schools fees, denying having access to the financial module of the institution which is being managed by the bursary department.
He described the allegations that linked him to the collapse of the portal as unacceptable.
Repeated efforts to get reaction from Egwurube either through phone calls or on his WhatsApp page failed, while the Vice Chancellor, Professor Tor Iorapuu could not be reached for comments at the time of this report, as further investigation revealed that he travelled to France after the governing council meeting which held on February 3 when the ad-hoc committee was inaugurated.
