From Kehinde Adewole
Registrar of the Ekiti State University (EKSU) , Barr. Akin Arogundade has disowned claims by Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU, Akure zone) and others, against FUOYE’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) Administration, Prof. Abayomi Fasina over allegations that there are documents of an allegedly constituted panel that indicted the University don on allegations of misconduct.
This was just as strong indications emerged on Wednesday that a national daily which published an allegedly damaging report on Tuesday about Prof. Fasina may be dragged to court soon.
The national Daily on Tuesday had published a report which alleged that some documents purportedly retrieved from the Management of EKSU and signed by some principal staff of the school have indicted Prof.. Fasina on allegations of receiving double salaries at some time, absconding from duty in EKSU and not resgning his appointment in the University before joining FUOYE among others. A certain lawyer, Bayo Idowu was cited and qouted copiusly to have written a petition dated October 28, 2020, based on the purported indicting documents and demanded that Prof. Fasina be disqualified from being part of FUOYE VCship race.
But while reacting to the development in a telephone chat with our Correspondent on Tuesday evening, Mr. Arogundade, Registrar of EKSU who is officially the custodian of all such documents, said there was no document in his office that indicts Prof. Fasina on any official misconduct. He therefore disowned any document, being circulated in the public, alleged to have indicted Prof. Fasina and being alleged to have come from EKSU.
The Registrar said: “My office did not make available any document indicting Prof. Fasina on any misconduct. We do not have such document and I am not aware of any panel report that has indicted Fasina in any way because Prof. Fasina has not been invited recently to any panel of equiry set up by EKSU. So, I cannot say there is any document from the Management of EKSU that indicted Prof. Fasina. Anyone can display any document and say it indicts Prof. Fasina but to the best of my knowledge such document has not come from EKSU Management.”
Meanwhile, Prof. Fasina has expressed shock and disbelief at the report from the national Daily which he described as full of contradictions and misrepresentations. He said it was clear the report was a deliberate plan to tarnish his image and a political plan to spread a campaign of calumny against him as the race to FUOYE VCship is on going.
It will be recalled that ASUU, Akure zone had raised an alarm that Prof. Fasina was leading other candidates in the on-going process of the VCship race, alleging that out-going VC , Prof. Kayode Soremekun was imposing him. But FUOYE Management had denied the allegations saying the University Council was yet to meet over the selection let alone release names of nominated candidates.
Reacting further, Fasina said: “First of all, all the issues and allegations raised in the said petition reported on Tuesday in the daily, were issues that have been raised more than two years ago by these distractors and they have sent their petitions to the various anti-graft agencies which investigated me and later gave me clean bill of health.
” All the allegations are untrue, baseless and unfounded but because these evil doers have always lost on each ocassion they spread these lies, they don’t want to rest. But they shall continue to fail. The question to ask is, why are they sponsoring the media at this time on a matter that has since been laid to rest? and which some of them are even already in court?. The truth is that they told many lies to the reporter of the national daily and gave him fake documents which the EKSU Management itself cannot defend and has even disowned. Again, for the records and as a way of repeating myself on these matter, let me reiterate the following:
“I, Prof. Fasina applied officially for transfer of service. Through my Head of Department (HOD) and the Dean of my faculty to the VC and it was approved by the VC and the approval was conveyed by EKSU Registrar to FUOYE Registrar
; There was no time l absconded from EKSU because my HOD and Dean didn’t report that l absconded. The records are there to show in my department and the faculty. You can also verify from my colleagues in the faculty; The committee set up at EKSU didn’t invite me for any interaction, how then could they have concluded that l was indicted? . Such indicting committee, if at all it existed as being claimed, was unfair to me; Where did the fact finding committee report emanated from? Is it from the office of the Registrar of the University who is the custodian of records? ; I didn’t collect any double salary at any time; and l have records of all my documents, that these distractors claimed were not seen in my file at the EKSU Registry; and Transfer of service is different from resignation. I didn’t resign my appointment but rather l asked for transfer of service. There are different ways of ceasing from public service and transfer of service is one of them. I also want to state that based on the misrepresentation of facts by the report of the national daily, the erring newspaper should expect a legal battle with me soonest,” he said.
