Delta Students Accuse Police IG Of Aiding Governor Uduaghan to Scuttle Investigation Into Bursary Fraud
Members of the National Association of Delta State Students Union (NADESSTU) have accused the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar, of aiding their State Governor, Emmanuel Uduaghan, to deliberately botch the investigation into an annual bursary scam perpetrated by men of the Ministry of Higher Education in the State.
It is a shocking accusation, but student leaders believe they have cause for their claims.
The Delta State students in the University of Lagos (UNILAG) said they had not been receiving their bursaries since the Commissioner for Higher Education in the State, Mr. Hope Eghagha, became came on board in 2009.
They told SaharaReporters that since then, students only saw an approved sum of N2billion for their bursaries on the pages of national daily newspapers, but have never received the same information directly.
The executive members of the union said they launched a probe into the cause of approved, but not publicly released fund information, and discovered that the accounts they had paid their moneys into were hurriedly created. This raised numerous questions for the student leaders. The accounts were created by personnel at the office of the Commissioner for Higher Education, Mr. Hope Eghagha. They alleged that Mr. Eghagha is aware, and is part of the fraud, and has been frustrating every effort to investigate the matter ever since.
“23,000 fake account numbers were generated to corner the money so that the genuine students do not get it even though they publish it on papers that they paid us”, said Mr. Ambrose Ezenweani, a former leader of the Union in UNILAG.
Mr. Ambrose said he had challenged the fraud several times, but that the Governor, Mr. Uduaghan, had often intervened to stop investigations, using the Inspector General of Police to enforce the suspension of deeper looks into the financial wrong-doings .
The angry students, who said they would not admit defeat, have written to the Inspector General of Police, Mr. Mohammed Abubakar, accusing him of momentarily intervening whenever their investigations would attain a certain stage of success. They said Mr. Abubakar’s intervention was always geared to save Mr. Hope Eghagha, and his accomplices of embarrassment. Saharareporters obtained a copy of their letter.
They cited an instance in Benin City, while an investigation was on-going into the crime, that the State Governor, Mr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, had called the Inspector General of Police to railroad the probe.
Their letter, which also informed the Inspector General of their impending protest, set to take place at the University of Lagos, accused the IG of playing a similar role as of earlier in Benin City, to railroad the investigation.
The students said the multiple names generated to scam the students in UNILAG, for example, are non-existent on the UNILAG register. They announced through the letter, their protest regarding the fraud coming up on Monday, the 7th of April at the institution in Lagos.
