How Sacked UNIZIK VC Fraudulently Obtained Professorship – FUGUS Management

The management of the Federal University, Gusau (FUGUS) in Zamfara State has issued a strong rebuttal against the claims made by Bernard Odoh, the recently sacked Vice-Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK). Odoh, now at the center of a controversy surrounding his academic credentials, has faced accusations of fraudulently obtaining the rank of professor.

Odoh, who was removed as UNIZIK’s vice-chancellor just three weeks after his appointment, has long claimed that he was first appointed as a visiting professor at FUGUS in 2014, before being promoted to full professor of applied geophysics the following year. These claims came under scrutiny after UNIZIK’s chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) challenged the validity of his professorship.

In an attempt to substantiate his position, Odoh produced several documents, including what he described as “certified true copies” of his offer of tenure and confirmation of promotion to the rank of professor. Additionally, he presented court affidavits from two of his three assessors who allegedly recommended him for the promotion. One affidavit, purportedly from Ibrahim Bawa Kaura, the former registrar of FUGUS, also surfaced online, claiming that Kaura had overseen his promotion to professorship.

However, the management of FUGUS has vehemently rejected these documents, calling them fraudulent. Yakubu Anivbassa, the current Registrar of FUGUS, dismissed the documents as “products of fraud” and accused Odoh of collaborating with the former vice-chancellor and registrar of the university to falsify records. Anivbassa clarified that there is no official record of Odoh’s employment at FUGUS, and he further asserted that the documents presented by Odoh were certified by Bawa, who no longer held the position of registrar and had no legal authority to authenticate any university documents.

According to Anivbassa, Bawa’s actions, including his use of a fake stamp to validate the documents, violated the requirements of the Evidence Act of 2011, which mandates specific procedures for certifying documents. These include the payment of fees, a seal, and a signature from the officer responsible. Anivbassa pointed out that the certification process had not been followed, rendering the documents legally invalid. He also highlighted that Bawa had been disengaged from the university in 2018 and, therefore, lacked the legal capacity to endorse any official papers.

The FUGUS Registrar went on to emphasize that Odoh had never been employed by the university in any capacity, let alone as a professor. In fact, he described Odoh’s claims as desperate attempts to manipulate his academic history for personal gain, including his ambition to secure the position of vice-chancellor at UNIZIK.