Enugu Govt orders former admin secretary to refund N55m collected since 2010

The Enugu State government has ordered a former Administrative Secretary of the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu, Mr. Basil Offoh to retire or refund within two weeks the sum of N55m he collected between 2008 and 2010 as advances to execute various official assignments for the school.

In a letter tilted RE: IGNOBLE ACTS OF ONE OF OUR STAFF, referenced ENSG/ SSG/M.O34/T.1/59, dated September 25, 2023 and  addressed to Mr. Basil Obbina Offor, Barrister Juliet N. Okonkwo, Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Legal Matters and Inter-Ministerial Relations (Office of the SSG), noted that the State Governor, Mr. Peter Mbah had taken a dim view of Mr. Offor’s alleged ‘ignoble acts’ as an employee of the IMT and had decided to take action.

“Sir, Your attention is drawn to His Excellency’s directive on the ignoble acts perpetrated by you when your were Administrative Secretary to the then Rector, Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu,” Barrister Okonkwo wrote on behalf of the SSG, Professor Chidiebere Onyia.

“In view of the above, His Excellency, the Governor has directed that you retire or refund the cash advance of N55,175,473.00 (fifty-five million, one hundred and seventy-five thousand, four hundred and seventy three naira only) granted you between 2008 and 2010, within two weeks of receipt of this letter, to the IMT.”

A month ago, early August to be precise, the 50-year old IMT came under media searchlight following the setting up of an eight-man ‘Investigative Panel’ by the three-month administration of Governor Peter Mbah to probe the finances of, and other alleged administrative irregularities in, the IMT.

The panel, which has since submitted its report after a one-month sitting, was ironically triggered by a petition allegedly written by Mr. Offor against the management of the school, alleging financial and other improprieties by the Management.

When the news of the Investigative Panel first broke, a media report on the matter quoted IMT sources as accusing Mr. Offor of dragging the school to the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) instead of retiring the money advanced to him, as others who had similar issues with the school’s management were doing.

Although the NICN reportedly dismissed his case and awarded a N100,000 cost against him, Offor was later to take umbrage at the media report in which his issue with his employers at IMT over the non-retirement of the N55m was described as ‘financial malfeasance’, going as far as getting his lawyers to write the online publishers to do a retraction.

His argument, according to the letter from his lawyers, was that his failure (or refusal) to retire monies advanced to him for official assignments over a period of two years (between 2008 and 2010) did not exactly amount to ‘financial malfeasance.’

However, Barrister Okonkwo’s letter from the SSG’s office, an obvious response to a petition from IMT against Mr. Offor, clearly referred to “the ignoble acts perpetrated by you (Mr. Offor) when your were Administrative Secretary to the then Rector (Professor Edwin Onyeneje), Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu,” and demanded a retirement or REFUND of all the monies advanced to Mr. Offor over a two-year period, a certain indication that the Enugu State government was beginning to treat the matter as a financial fraud (Malfeasance) of sort against the IMT employee.

Founded in 1973 along the line of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) USA, with Professor Mark Okoro Chijioke, an electrical engineering professor from Arochukwu, Abia State, and a former teacher at MIT, as its first Rector, IMT, which currently awards degrees in eight courses, in affiliation with  the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), is rated as the second best state-owned polytechnic in Nigeria and 7th overall among the 112 polytechnics and or colleges of technology in the country.