Financial malpractices rock AOCOED

When Oseyiza Oogbodo Blog visited the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOED) recently, it was on a fact-finding mission to find out the truth or otherwise of alleged claims that AOCOED’s management is heavily involved in financial malpractices.

AOCOED turned out to have the regular campus setting: sculpture on its grounds, stately trees with park benches under them, etc. Most importantly, it had that peaceful, relaxed and carefree campus atmosphere that would make a secondary school student feel like being in its setting. People who had business in its premises were coming and going out easily, the students were engaged in various activities and even the staff too were all busy attending to their duties.

The breeze blowing through the expansive campus was so soothing that it was akin to paradise. However, a non-academic staff of AOCOED, Comrade Lateef Igboro, had astonishing and unpleasant revelations to make about the school; revelations which are totally in contrast with its serene façade.

“Serious financial malpractices are going on in the school,” Igboro disclosed. “The scams are being perpetrated by the management. They are cheating us out of a lot of our financial entitlements and over 98% of the staff are not happy about the situation we are in.”

Apparently, Igboro is not just a man of words and no action. He has taken steps and continues to take steps to battle the school authorities over the financial injustices.

“I won’t take their mismanagement of the school funds lying down,” he declared. “I am not the sort of person who will just stand by and do nothing while being cheated of my rightful entitlements. I am not interested in what isn’t mine. I want only what is mine, and if anyone tries to cheat me of what is mine, I will fight back with all the resources at my disposal.”

According to him, he is fighting not just for his own rights alone, but that of the entire AOCOED community. He has written petitions to the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola; the Lagos State Head of Service, the Honourable Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly; the Commissioner of the Ministry of Establishment, Training and Pensions; the Special Adviser, Lagos State Ministry of Education; AOCOED’s Governing Council, auditor, bursar and unions; and even the dreaded anti-graft body, EFCC.

The contents of the petition, reproduced below, are quite succinct:

PARTIAL IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RECENTLY PAID ARREARS: REQUEST FOR MODALITY FOR PAYMENT

Referring to the above subject matter, on behalf of myself and members of the college. I wish to draw your attention to the recent partial/unjudicious implementation of the 42 months arrears on HATISS 6 and the approved 15% of salary increase by the state government in 2007. You are cause to explain the circumstances surrounding the non-payment of arrears on HATISS 4 and also to explain the modalities in the payment of the recent implemented arrears of HATISS 6 and 15% salary increase.

Over 98% of staff of the college are dissatisfied with the way the arrears were worked out and paid to the staff by the Lagos State Government and the college management.

In view of the above, I want to urge you to please honestly provide us with the criteria for the payment of the arrears with the breakdown on each grade level per month and make it public for members of the college community to see for themselves and ask questions where they are not satisfied.

Please respond to the above to clear your name of any sharp practice as being insinuated by some large sections of the college community.

But surprisingly, Igboro says not even one of the people in power has deemed it fit to look into the issue. “Since I sent out all the petitions and they were all duly received by these eminent leaders of our society, none of them has gotten back to me or taken up the case.”

Insisting that none of those mentioned above got back to him or looked into the issue, he said sadly, “My efforts to bring about a resolution to the financial misappropriations going on in AOCOED have made me realise that corruption has truly bitten deep into the fabric of our society. Our society is so corrupt now that it is an Herculean task to fight corruption.

“I’m sure the reason those I contacted have not waded into the issue is simply because of corruption. It has so tainted many people that they find it difficult to do the right thing. I also feel that all these people who are higher up all know each other one way or the other so when they got my petition, they probably got in touch with each other and they were reassured that there was no problem so they should forget about it,” he alleged.

Just possibly, Igboro’s allegation of complicity at a higher level to ensure his petitions don’t see the light of day might have a bit of substance.

A prominent member of the AOCOED staff community who spoke under the condition of anonymity literally tore Igboro to shreds while reacting to the issue. “Who is Igboro in this community?” the man blasted. “I’ll tell you who Igboro is. He’s just a nonentity. He’s a nobody. He’s just a clerk in this institution who has decided to make himself relevant.”

Speaking further, he said, “We are used to Igboro here. We just allow him be because we know his bark is worse than his bite. He keeps writing petitions all the time, frankly, for his own selfish interest. We know his game. He wants to be Chairman of the Non-Academic Staff Union (NASU) so he feels writing petitions is what will make him relevant. As a matter of fact, he has contested for NASU Chairman twice and he lost woefully both times.”

Reacting to the disclosures about him, Igboro was unperturbed. “I am not bothered by whatever is said about me. Because I’m fighting for justice, they are looking for ways to discredit my character. Is it a crime for me to contest for NASU Chairman? Really, I do not care if they cast aspersions on my person, but I do care that they never paid us a single kobo of HATISS 4, HATISS 6 was partially implemented and they also owe us our cooperative contributions as well as 18 months arrears on the 56% increment implemented lastly. These are what I want them to clarify.”

Supporting Igboro’s claims, Comrade Michael Avosetinyen, Chairman of the College of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU-AOCOED), said, “It is a fact that the college management is owing us some arrears, including 18 months arrears on the last 56% increment as well as all the arrears owed the cooperatives. But we have met them and they said they will pay all. However, they did not commit themselves by giving a specific date for payment or by entering into an agreement.”

Regarding the arrears of HATISS 4, he said, “It’s been such a long time and I wasn’t in power when its negotiations took place. Honestly, I can’t say what went wrong with it other than to say that there are discrepancies regarding HATISS 4, some have said it was paid, others said it wasn’t paid, so my union is still doing investigations about it.”

Another person who is dissatisfied with the AOCOED financial system is Kosoko Mueez Adebola, President of the AOCOED Multipurpose Cooperative Society (AMCS). “The non-remittance of our cooperative contributions by the management is morally and totally wrong,” he said. “They are owing all the campus cooperatives to the tune of over a N100m. They are specifically owing AMCS over N45m and this has led to a paralysis of all our activities. We can’t do our business again, neither can we borrow our members money. They began withholding our cooperative contributions in June last year and it became worse in September.”

As claimed by Igboro, many of the AOCOED staff seem to be unhappy about the salary arrears and withheld cooperative contributions. Many of them spoke to Saturday Mirror under the condition of anonymity, claiming that they might lose their jobs if they are known and they don’t want to go back into the labour market.

“Not remitting our cooperative contributions is financial crime that the management should be prosecuted for,” said one of the staff. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but what they are doing is totally illegal and is a financial crime.”

Reacting to the withheld cooperatives’ funds, another prominent staff of the institution said, “The cooperative societies have themselves to blame for the contributions being withheld. When the funds were with them, they were mismanaged badly. Loans were given not on set parameters but based on friendship. Even people who were not supposed to be loaned more than N140,000 were loaned N600,000. And when management found out that this was the case, they capitalised on the mismanagement to withhold the funds.

“The truth of the matter however is that management had no choice than to sit on the contributions.  Management is actually borrowing it to pay salaries. I can tell you authoritatively that the government doesn’t give the school enough money to cover the salary we are paying.

“And when we went to the Governor and said we needed a certain amount to enable us pay salaries, he said education is not the only priority or responsibility of his administration, that he’s also devoting a lot of money to security and other matters. His only concession was that he would add 25% to what he was giving us before and that we should source the rest through internally generated revenue. So before we were receiving N100m but it’s now N125m and it’s still not enough.

“And that is why we are having problems with paying the cooperatives. It is still very difficult to generate revenue by ourselves but we are trying to establish some businesses to help us make money. As a matter of fact, we are overstaffed in the school and the solution would be for us to reduce our workforce but we don’t want to sack people when we know that jobs are not readily available.”

While the disgruntled staff were tabling their grouses to OOB, one of them made a startling statement that brought another dimension to bear on the whole affair.

“It is not surprising why the provost is withholding our cooperative contributions and is also mishandling the N250m accredited to the school to give it a facelift. He is using the siphoned funds to build himself a mansion at our own expense.”

While most of the staff are scared of coming out in the open, Igboro is not, and he added his voice to the above allegation against the provost.

“I have heard that the provost is constructing a palatial property. It was other staff members that came to me and said the provost is using the school’s accreditation and cooperatives’ funds to build himself a property. Because they know I am always ready to take up any issue that is out of place, they urged me to take it up as usual, but I told them it was high time they too start taking action against the injustices so I didn’t take it up. Even now, I’m not overly concerned about it but the other misappropriations pertaining to our salary and cooperative money.”