The Acting Provost, Federal College of Agriculture, Ishiagu, Ebonyi State, Dr. Felix Anuebunwa and three other management staff of the institution are being investigated by the zone 6 command of Nigeria Police for allegedly stealing one Mercedes Tipper.
The development has thrown the institution into another round of scandal in the recent past.
Investigation by the police followed a petition written by Agama Agama of B. N. Ugwu and Company, counsel to Mr. Phillip Orji, the supplier of the said vehicle with chasis number 341439 to the college.
The acting provost has, however, denied any wrong doing in the transaction saying that Mr. Orji wanted to dupe the institution of several millions of naira through his dubious business proposal.
In the petition, Mr. Orji’s counsel complained to the police that his client supplied the Mercedes tipper to one Mr. Theophilus Ndubuaku around January 2014 at the cost of Six Million, Five Hundred Thousand Naira stressing that instead of paying him his money, Ndubuaku in connivance with the Acting Provost, Ikeije and one Ogbomo Nosa paid the money into the account of Global Growth Construction Company Limited for which Ogbomo Nosa fronted as a Director.
The petitioners alleged that after a search was conducted by the Corporate Affairs Commission, it became evident that Ogbomo Nosa T. was not a director of the three-member company as at the time and that the company has never changed its members since incorporation.
Alleging that the said Global Growth Construction Company Limited was but a conduit through which the money for the vehicle was diverted, the petitioners disclosed that information available to them from the Accounts department of the College showed that the Acting Provost and others paid a total of Seven Million, Five Hundred Thousand Naira to Global Growth Construction Company Limited instead of N6.5 million in September 2013, two months before Mr. Phillip Orji imported the vehicle into Nigeria.
While expressing dismay that three weeks after letters of invitation was served on the Acting Provost and his accomplices by the Zone 6 Police command, the four men have remained elusive, the petitioners urged the police to do all in its powers to ensure that the suspects are arrested to explain how a vehicle imported in November 2013 as evidenced by the custom paper was sold in September 2013 by a company that neither imported or bought the vehicle.
Orji’s counsel maintained that the arrest and arraignment of the fleeing suspects would help to curtail the stealing spree in the Federal College of Agriculture.
However when contacted on the phone, the Acting Provost, Anuebunwa said though he was out of the State he was not on the run as speculated by the petitioners stressing that he has petitioned the Assistant Inspector General of Police, Zone 6 on why Orji should be arrested for trying to dupe the college of large sums of money.
He said that Orji in connivance with a staff of the college extorted N1.9 million from the college as part of their expenses on the vehicle and went ahead to force the college to purchase a Cooling van it did not order.
“It was when Orji started making fresh request for another N1.6 million after we paid for the cooling van that we saw through his dubious practices and decided to petition the police”, Dr. Anuebunwa declared.
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