Fresh tension in Abia poly as ICPC wades into alleged certificate racketeering
3 min read
Abia Poly
The Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has opened investigations into the alleged fraudulent award of an Ordinary National Diploma to one Chief Gregory Okafor by the Registrar of Abia State Polytechnic, Aba.
A source within the headquarters of the Commission in Abuja who disclosed this on Tuesday to Newsband also assured that anyone indicted will be prosecuted within record time.
The source revealed that when most of the students were yet to conclude their industrial training, and their final results were still being awaited, as the lecturers were yet to submit the results to the Examinations and Records department for processing, Chief Gregory Okafor, obviously in a desperate bid to procure an academic qualification so as to contest for the Presidency of Aba Sports Club, an office which minimum academic qualification is an Ordinary National Diploma, allegedly began to collude with and induce the Registrar of the Polytechnic, Mr. Oriaku.
“The Registrar was allegedly induced to bend all the rules and bypass all the procedures for the award of Diploma. Between the second week of November and last day of November 2021, Chief Gregory Okafor allegedly compromised the Registrar of the Polytechnic to maintain correspondences with the General Secretary of the Club, Mr. Darlington Nwokolo, pledging in an attestation letter that Chief Okafor was a student whose result was still being processed.”
He continued, “When the attestation was reportedly rejected by the Club Trustees as an alternative to certificate, the Registrar allegedly went out of his way to coordinate a massive racket among some lecturers of the department of Business Administration and Management, whom were said to have been induced to hurriedly produce results for Chief Okafor within twenty-four hours.
“A lecturer, Mr. James Ogbuewu, who had earlier been dismissed from the Polytechnic, was said to have been recalled and induced to generate a result for Chief Okafor, given that Okafor had failed one of the courses which the expelled lecturer had handled before his dismissal.And within forty-eight hours, a Diploma Statement of Result, dated November 30, 2021 was hurriedly manufactured and issued to Gregory Okafor by the Registrar even when other classmates of Chief Okafor were yet to graduate and their results still being awaited. Worse still, there were reportedly no fewer than five previous courses which Okafor was unable to pass and was required to rewrite.
“Aware of the dire consequences of his act if caught, the Registrar chose not to append his name and signature to the statement of result. He instead wrote the name of the previous Registrar, his immediate predecessor, who had left office many months earlier.
“So, a statement of result that is dated November 30th, 2021 has on it the name of (and was signed for) a former Registrar who had left office many months before the date, even when other documents from the same office of the Registrar signed on the same November 30th, 2021, as preliminary investigations have shown, are all bearing the name and signature of the incumbent Registrar. This is why the Commission will do everything to get to the root of the matter and bring the culprits to book,” the source said.
All efforts made by Newsband to reach the Registrar,however proved abortive as he neither took his calls nor responded to the text. messages sent to him.
