Alleged fraud:FG absolves Federal University, Oye Ekiti VC

The Federal Ministry of Education has waded into the feud between the local chapter of Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU) and the Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti, (FUOYE), Prof. Kayode Soremekun.

The supervising ministry, it was learnt after receiving the petition from the ASUU local chapter and the response from the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Soremekun, exonerated him from the various allegations leveled against him by the union, describing the allegations as baseless.

The local ASUU at FUOYE had in a petition to the Federal Ministry of Education called for a visitation panel to unravel some of the allegations contained in its petition against Prof Soremekun.

Some of the allegations against the Vice Chancellor include failure to provide infrastructure in the institution, illegal recruitment and misappropriation of funds, all of which were denied in his reply to the Minister of Education.

In the Vice Chancellor’s reply, it was stated that the petitioners failed to consult the ASUU Congress before sending the petition through the national body to the Minister of Education which made members to believe that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead the Minister about happenings at the university.

According to documents on the crisis, the VC pointed out that ‘if the national president of ASUU had taken time to make consultations, he would have been able to get the facts about the real situation rather than relying on the lies furnished him by the chairman of the local chapter of ASUU.’

Investigations revealed that contrary to allegations of inadequate infrastructure at the institution, the present management has embarked on the construction of over 30 projects some of which had been completed, which has led to the accreditation of all courses in the university, in preparation for the current academic session.

It was gathered that as a result of some of the feats and innovations at FUOYE, it ranked the best among those that were established at the same time, and 14^th among all the universities in Nigeria in the last ranking exercise carried out by the National Universities Commission (NUC).

Currently, the university has gotten approval for the commencement of law programme from the NUC, only awaiting the nod of the law regulatory body while that of medicine is underway.

FUOYE remains the only university among six others that were established in 2011 that is running two campuses, one at Oye and the other one at Ikole and the management has ensured that necessary infrastructure for the convenience of the students are being put in place.

Omonijo was also accused of pilfering some confidential documents from personal files of members and when the case was established against him, the university’s council ordered his suspension following his refusal to disclose the source of those documents.