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Prof Hope Eghagha
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The Delta State Commissioner for Higher Education,
poet, author and lecturer, Professor Hope Eghagha, has reacted to an
unconfirmed allegation over fake names in the bursary list of Delta State
students in tertiary institutions and described the rumour as spurious.
The columnist and former member of the Editorial
Board of The Guardian newspapers says, “Check the newspapers
of 2011 between July and September, you will find that we made announcement of
fake names trying to benefit from the bursary. We found it amusing when
students said they discovered the fake names. Let those who want to be thorough
in their investigation go back to their archive and look at when the news came
out. We briefed the executive arm of the government and they know that they are
persons called ‘bursary merchants’. I don’t know whether they
have been able to really confront that issue before. But this time, with the
support of the government, we decided to tackle it. And each year we did the
bursary, we refunded money back to Delta State Government. This year, although
we received 580 million naira, we expended 500 million naira. 80 million naira
is there. We did that for four years. A board that is returning money is now
accused of fraud.
"What we have always said is: “this money is meant
for students.” Some students don’t register well.
Some use wrong bank account. Some, the name of the applicants are different
from the account holders’ names. In the first
year, when we confronted them, they said it is their mother’s account and we
advised them to open their own accounts.
“Our people have a proverb that, if you
catch a thief in your farm in the morning, and call him a thief, he would call
you a thief. That is what is going on. It is very sad that persons who have
been doing funny things in the system are the ones crying aloud now more than
the bereaved and some persons believed them. Some people in the social media
and bloggers just lashed into that without even getting the other side of the
story. It is very sad.
”We heard of accusation about insertion
of fake names. We are doing our best to make sure that all those fake names don’t collect bursary,
though we have not gone round to fish out the person who did it. But the matter
has been reported to security agencies. Indeed! When we looked at those names
and those accounts, we didn’t have to believe
that one person did that. It is not easy for one man or two persons to open
23,000 fake accounts. So what we believed is that different persons did
it," he said.
He advised the public to go and see who opened the
accounts, if the accounts were opened and who benefited.
"At this stage we have not established who did
it but we believed that different persons attempted it. The fact that we
stopped it was an achievement. It was an attempted fraud, they didn’t succeed. We have
tightened the loopholes. If per adventure they succeeded in one way or the other,
that is the reason we go to Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and
there is a review process every year. Working with the board in 2009, we
decided to be transparent."
Some blogs published that nobody knows the where
about of Ambrose Ezenwani, the man who claimed that he raised an alarm about
the bursary list after he was transferred from Sabo Police Station, Lagos to
Delta State. Eghagha explains, “The Delta State
Government did not arrest anybody, neither did the Delta State instruct any
agent to arrest anybody. I did not arrest anybody. Apart from the formal
complaint that we made in 2011, we have not set out to arrest anybody but what
happened was that one of the fellows that were mentioned has been a beneficiary
of scams that have been in the system. He is a graduate that has finished his
national service who brought some ex students together and they converged in
the University of Lagos with a big poster and accused the board of fraud. It
was amusing looking at the man who was accusing others.
“I implore you to go to the University of
Lagos and ask some students from Delta State who are in their final year and
those who have graduated about the bursary.
The National Association of Delta State Students in
University (NADESSTU) was very enraged about the accusation so they travelled
to Lagos, made formal complaints and he was arrested and detained. Then the
police in Delta State rearrested him and charged him to court. He was remanded
in prison by the magistrate until the next hearing which is coming up on June
9, 2014, and some people went online and accused Delta State Government of
arresting him whom they described as the whistle blower. We blew the whistle in
2011 that is the reason we have been putting all these mechanism to stop fraud. If I ordered his arrest, I would be man
enough to say so. He did enough to be arrested but I just ignored him, feeling
he is a young man that is just starting his life.
“If we had gone after the 23,000 names
that were fake, people would complain and accuse us of disturbing innocent
students. But that has changed. Subsequently, when we find names of persons
trying implicate the board, we will report and let the security go after one or
two of them.
"The narrative was altered. The persons who
discovered the infraction within the system were now being accused and most of
those touts went to town without doing proper investigations. It is important
for the press to get the other side of the story before they publish any story,”
Eghagha said.
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