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Crisis rocks Kano Poly over alleged misappropriation of N400m

By Abba Anwar, Kano
24 March 2016   |   12:38 am
An alleged misappropriation of funds at Kano State Polytechnic is generating furore in the state, as the Director of School of Management Studies at the state’s polytechnic, Dr. Salisu Indabawa ...

Education

An alleged misappropriation of funds at Kano State Polytechnic is generating furore in the state, as the Director of School of Management Studies at the state’s polytechnic, Dr. Salisu Indabawa has written a petition against the chairman of the Expanded Management Committee.

In a petition dated March 2, 2016, titled “Before The Next Registration…” Indabawa questioned the Free Education Relief Package of N70 million which he claimed was given twice and the sale of scratch cards, which he said were in two categories, for regular and part time, amongst others.

“Another area of concern and that was not captured in the submission was the money approved by the then Ministry for Higher Education to be collected by the Polytechnic from the students. The Central Administration collected N6,000, unit schools N1,000, Social Science Departments N500 and Science/Technology based Departments N1,000,” he said in the petition.

It continues, “This is what gave the unit schools the blood to remain alive, while the N6,000 accrued to Central Admin could not be accounted for. Sir, this violates Section 0204 of the Financial Instructions which says, “Accounting Officer shall be held personally and peculiarly responsible for all wrongdoings in his Ministry/Extra-Ministerial Department. From the same submission all the accounts maintain with GT Bank and same others with Jaiz Bank were not disclosed”.

He explained bitterly, “Your Excellency, when you put all these figures together that accrued to the Polytechnic, it will amount to N388,312,345.01. So my crime was the question I asked, ‘where are all these monies?’ During the same period under review we could not host and conduct accreditation exercises; examinations were postponed twice due to lack of examination materials. We wrote examinations without entertainment and supervision allowance, no DTA for moderators and moderators’ allowances not paid.

“…No unit school has a N3,000,000 expenditure from the IGR, be it capital or recurrent; no school at the Central Admin to consume all the money, no school subventions, peculiar allowances for 26 months not paid… no working materials in all the schools, practicals were not conducted, etc”.

In its civic engagement, the opposition party Alliance for Democracy (AD) through its National Organising Secretary, Comrade Abdullahi Ibrahim, in a letter to governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, called for immediate intervention by the state government over the crisis facing the state polytechnic.

Titled “RE: My Open Letter…” it states, “This letter (Director’s letter) has been going round to various hands, like mine, enlightening us about deep corruption being perpetrated by those saddled with the responsibility to move the institution forward. Rather, they are busy giving false accounting, records of transactions to the state government, different from their banking records.

“My party AD has been a true supporter of your excellence and the excellence must not fade. I implore you to set up a strong anti-corruption task force directly under your office to take action on this new development that is hidden from you”.

All efforts to get the Rector, Prof. Dalhatu Muhammad Galadanchi, to speak on the issue proved abortive. After undergoing intense scrutiny before getting access to the Rector’s office, journalists were told that he was on his way to Abuja for an emergency engagement.

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