In a rather damning report, 22 corruption scandals worth over N12 billion have been discovered in the University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State. According to a 2020 audit of Nigerian ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation (OAuGF), released in December 2023 the Agriculture institution was discovered to be neck deep in many corruption scandals and abuse of office between January 2018 and December 2019, ranging from diversion and misappropriation of public funds to non-remittance of internally generated revenue and statutory taxes. The report showed that the revelation at Umudike were the highest of all the universities indicted.
Though the OAuGF did not mention the name of the indicted vice-chancellor recommended for probe over the corruption cases by the National Assembly, a search indicated that Francis Otunta, a professor of Mathematics may be the chief executive who may have questions to answer on the matter. This is because he served as the vice-chancellor of the university during the period captured by the audit. The OAuGF uncovered how the university, in October 2018, paid N43,211,880.06 for different items, including supply, installation, and training for a Xerox 125 printer/scanner/copier, solution + server, UPS (APC) 10KVA, and stabilizer (NEXUS) 10KVA.
It noted, however, that relevant documents such as store receipts, vouchers, ledgers, bin cards, issued vouchers, and requisition forms were not produced for scrutiny. While both the treasury circular and the financial regulations emphasize the importance of MDAs limiting their annual budgetary expenditure to no more than 75 per cent of their gross revenue and remitting the remaining 25 per cent to the consolidated revenue fund (CRF) on or before the 15th of the month following the month of revenue collection, the university failed to produce evidence that N444 million was remitted to the CRF.
