How Sacked UNIZIK VC, Odoh Fraudulently Obtained Professorship – University

The management of the Federal University, Gusau (FUGUS), Zamfara State, has disowned the professorship letter being paraded by the sacked Vice Chancellor of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Anambra State, Bernard Odoh.

Naija News reports that Odoh was sacked barely three weeks after his appointment, recruitment processes and academic profile became subjects of controversies.

Odoh repeatedly claimed that he was appointed as a visiting professor at FUGUS in 2014 and was later promoted to full professor of applied geophysics at the institution in 2015.

However, in a statement on Thursday, the FUGUS Registrar, Yakubu Anivbassa, said the documents paraded by the sacked VC, which he claimed the university issued were products of fraud.

The statement read, “The Federal University Gusau hereby states in clear and unambiguous terms that the so called letters of tenure as professor and confirmation of promotion to the post of professor, dated 3oth April 2015 and 12th November, 2015, being paraded by Dr. Odoh Bernard Ifeanyi and purported to be certfied true copies hurriedly endorsed by Ibrahim Bawa Kaura, former Registrar of the Federal University, dated November 8, 2024, six years after the latter left the services of Federal University Gusau, are products of administrative fraud.

“The fraud was orchestrated by Odoh, working in cahoots with the former Vice Chancellor of the University and Registrar, as there is no official record of Dr. Odoh’s employment in the custody of the university.

“Further proof of the desperation to perpetrate such illegality is the impersonation and usurpation of the duties of the current Registrar of the university by the former Registrar, Ibrahim Bawa Kaura, who procured a fake stamp to certfiy Dr. Odoh’s equally fake employment documents as true copies on November 8, 2024, six years after his disengagement from the university.

“For purposes of emphasis, the requirements for certification of public documents are guided by law, In fact, section 104 of the Evidence Act 2011 clearly itemised the essential requirements necessary for a document to be regarded as a certified true copy as follows:

*The legal fees must be paid

*Thee must be certification at the foot of the document that it is a certified true copy of the original document in question.

*The document must be dated and signed by the officer responsible for issuing it, with his name and title of his office.

*The document must be sealed.

“A careful perusal of the above requirements and their juxtaposition against the certification of Dr. Odoh’s documents by Ibrahim Bawa Kaura clearly shows that the socalled certified true copies fell short of the provisions of Section 104 of the Evidence Act, 2011, and are, therefore, not legally tenable.

“It must be stated that having left the services of the university in 2018, Ibrahim Bawa Kaura, the former Registrar of the University of Gusau, has no locus to certify any official document for and on behalf of the university.”