“We can report that the vice-chancellors lied to the committee as our subsequent reporting will show.”
PREMIUM TIMES
The vice-chancellors of some Nigerian universities, who are at the centre of the extortion scandal involving some Nigerian federal lawmakers on Friday lied on oath in what appears a poorly-designed cover-up scheme.
A PREMIUM TIMES investigation had exposed how the lawmakers demanded bribes from the vice-chancellors and other agencies in exchange for compromising the ongoing investigation.
Our investigation revealed that the vice-chancellors paid N2 million each into a Providus Bank account number provided by the lawmakers through a middleman.
The Chairman of the Committee, Yusuf Gagdi, had on Tuesday summoned the vice-chancellors to appear today (Friday) in response to this newspaper’s publication.
About 10 vice-chancellors and the Acting Secretary of the National Universities Commission, Chris Mayaki, appeared before the Committee at the resumption of hearing today.
In his speech, Mr Gagdi repeated his false claim that our newspaper investigated and exposed his committee in order to blackmail its members and divert attention from the ongoing probe of federal agencies accused of recruitment racketeering.
Surprisingly, when he asked Mr Maiyaki and the vice chancellors to speak, he did not put them on oath, saying the oath they took the last time they appeared before his committee remained active.
“The acting executive secretary of NUC is here. You all interacted with us and took oath prior to this time,” Mr Gagdi said.
In his speech, Mr Maiyaki did not address the crux of our evidence-backed story but rather asked the vice chancellor of the University of Jos, Ishaya Tanko, to speak on behalf of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (CVCNU).
Mr Tanko claimed that the lawmakers did not demand any money from them and falsely accused PREMIUM TIMES of not contacting the vice-chancellors before publishing the story.
This paper contacted the Chairperson of CVCNU, Lillian Salami, as well as the alternate chairperson of the group, Sagir Abbas, who is the vice chancellor of Bayero University Kano. Our efforts to get comments from the two vice-chancellors were clearly reflected in our story. The two officials did not return calls or respond to messages sent to them.
Mr Tanko later admitted that the vice chancellors indeed paid money into the account number published by PREMIUM TIMES. However, he lied that the money was meant to buy dollars for a planned summit that some of the university vice-chancellors were scheduled to attend.
“The vice-chancellors did not provide any bribe to anybody. The vice-chancellors dispersed from this committee that day.
“What I recalled happened actually is that the next day, there was another workshop of the vice-chancellors and because there is another international workshop organised by CVCNU.
“I remember and recall that a lot of people are looking towards getting estacodes or some foreign exchange that will enable them to travel.
“I remember quite well that a lot of vice-chancellors were actually looking for
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