ABU Whistleblowers fault VC, Insist Melaye Did Not Graduate- Report

A combination of Examination of Officers and Librarians at Ahmadu Bello University on Monday repudiated claims by the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Ibrahim Garba during his appearance before the Nigeria Senate Ethics Committee that Senator Dino Melaye graduated from the University, according to Saharareporters.

Shortly after the Senate committee ended the carefully choreographed hearing, more documents from the university, including the Joint Convocation Brochure, surfaced.

According to the online publication, despite efforts by those professors to get away with the crime of forgery, they were still stuck during Mr. Melaye’s final year, unable help him graduate because he could not pass Geography 307 Long Field Trip, a compulsory course required for graduation. A copy of the department handbook made available to them shows that Geography 307 was a compulsory course that couldn’t have been waived.

What the late Professor D. O. Ogbonna did was to add 2-course units to Melaye’s Total Earned Course Units without recourse to the teacher, Dr. A.L. Bello, who was the supervisor of the course.

The publication further learnt that after a major academic scandal broke out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ogbonna was quietly eased out of ABU, along with some other professors who had engaged in grade inflation. The university allowed Ogbonna to retire and he found another job in Kogi state University, Melaye’s home state, before he died a few years ago of an undisclosed illness.

Several lecturers who reached out to the publication after the VC gave his testimony on Monday, said the VC had in the past week been coming to them to force the department to endorse Melaye’s graduation, but that they explained to him that they could not sustain a public declaration based on their records. According to the lecturers, the Vice Chancellor then took the tainted 400 L third semester results with him to Abuja before the Senate.

As soon as the VC declared that Mr. Melaye did graduate, a copy of the Joint Convocation brochure, with pages related to the Bachelors of Arts in Geography was also sent to Saharareporters, with the Senator’s name clearly absent. A source at the university disclosed that there was sufficient time for Mr. Melaye’s name to have appeared in the Brochure as the excuse of a printer devil or university crises on campuses could not explain away the obvious fact, during the convocation two sets of graduates from two academic sessions were merged together. Convocation took place in the year 2002, two solid years after Melaye reportedly graduated from ABU, but his name was absent from the brochure. His name was also absent from the Alumni directory of ABU.

1998/99 Third Class category BA in Geography,-Dino name is missing1999/2001 BA Geography Third class