Varsity Sacks Two Lecturers Over Alleged Misappropriation Of TETFund Grant

The Federal University, Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE) has wielded the big stick against two of its lecturers for allegedly misappropriating Tertiary Education Fund, TETFund.

The affected lecturers, Dr Oniyide Akingbe of the Department of English and Literary Studies as well as Dr Oluwagbemiga Adeyemi, of Demography and Social Statistics were sacked over allegations of gross misuse of research grants.

The university had set up an investigation panel to look into the utilization of TETFund intervention grant.

The committee, headed by the Dean, Faculty of Social Science, Prof J.S Omotola was mandated to investigate all cases of TETFund intervention outstanding funds, consider beneficiaries, who failed to submit reports in line with stipulated guidelines, investigate cases of abscondment of beneficiaries, misuse of such grants and make appropriate recommendations.

In its report, the panel alleged that the duo of Akingbe and Adeyemi not only failed to carry out the research; the topic was not in the research interest areas of the lead researcher.

The committee, quoting the testimony of one of the team members, Dr C .A Abrifor said it found it ‘curious that Abrifor, a lecturer 1 who was barely six months old in the university at the time could be made the lead researcher in a research team.’

“It was also observed that until the investigation panel wrote to them, there was no concrete evidence that the research had commenced despite having received the full amount of the grant. Two days after the grant was released, Dr Abrifor informed the committee that in accordance with the understanding reached among the team, he took for himself the sum of N400, 000 and allegedly transferred the remaining sum of N1.2m to the account of Dr Akingbe.

Adeyemi on his part said his role was to analyse the data for the research but the first data sent to him were faulty so he demanded a second one, which was yet to be sent to him.

The disciplinary committee, headed by Prof O Amu of the Department of Civil Engineering in its report said from the evidence before it, there was clear intention to misappropriate the grant.

“After a thorough review of the report of the investigation panel and interactions with parties involved, the committee concluded that a case of misconduct had been established against Abrifor, Akingbe and Adeyemi in accordance with section 14, 27 of the regulations governing the condition of senior staff of FUOYE.

“The committee however noted that Abrifor actually acted as a witness of truth by providing ample information as regards how the money was shared without any research work being done. This enabled the management to have a clear picture of the whole matter; other members of staff were also summoned for failure to submit their progress reports within the stipulated time frame. In the case of Akingbe and Adeyemi, they obtained three different research grants and did not submit any report, hence the management decided to treat their matter differently.