The Rivers State House of Assembly has issued a warrant of arrest on the Vice-Chancellor of PAMO University of Medical Sciences (PUMS) owned by former Governor Peter Odili.
It was gathered that the Assembly took the decision following failures of the VC to appear before ad-hoc committee established by the House to investigate about N28bn reportedly paid to the university by the state government for scholarships.
The committee headed by the Deputy Speaker, Dumle Maol, had in its last sitting insisted that the VC must appear in person to justify the utilisation of the funds.
He maintained that the appearance was necessary because the VC being the university’s chief accounting officer was required to speak directly to financial documents presented by the state Ministries of Finance and Education.
PAMO, a private medical university owned by Odili, has enjoyed years of patronage from the state government, which sponsors medical students from Rivers on scholarship.
Maol had compaluned that PAMO failed to appear when other stakeholders, including the Accountant-General, Commissioner for Finance, Commissioner for Education and their Permanent Secretaries, honoured the committee’s invitation.
According to him, the committee’s powers to summon the university’s chief accounting officer are backed by Section 129(A), (B) and (C) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.
“The only person that can come and speak to this document presented by the Ministry of Finance to this committee is the Chief Accounting Officer of the university, which is the Vice-Chancellor, and that is in line with the Constitution”, he said.
A statement signed on Friday by Martins Wachukwu, the Special Assistant to the Speaker, Martin Amaewhule, recovened on Friday to deliberating on the report of the committee.
The lawmakers after deliberating on the report presented by Maol resolved to issue a warrant of arrest on the Vice-Chancellor in line with the recommendation of the committee.
The House among other recommendations also urged the State Government to set up a committee to recover all unaccounted funds in possession of the PAMO University and deposit them in the Consolidated Revenue Account of the State.
The committee chronicled how the university received over N29billion from the state government claiming that there was no corresponding students’ enrolment, which it said gave credence to the reason behind the VC’s refusal to honour the invitations.
Commenting on the report, Speaker Amaewhule acknowledged the good intentions behind the government scholarships, but lamented its faulty implementation.
Amaewhule frowned on a situation where documents presented by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, and the Office of the Accountant-General were at variance.
He said by simple deduction, out of the over N29billion released by the state government to PAMO University, the school only utilized N5billion.
The speaker harped on the determination of the Assembly under his leadership to do the right thing irrespective of whose ox was gored, stressing that no individual could be bigger than the House as an institution empowered by the Constitution.
