Fort Hare University had nowhere resorted to going to court in a desperate bid to recover millions from former professor Edwin ljeoma.
Court papers suggest Ijeoma ensured many university contracts were directed to the Centre for Scientific Research and Innovation (CSRI), a he was director of, to score millions of rand to do consulting and training work for the university, while still also drawing a salary and supposedly dedicating his required full-time hours to the institution.
The university accuses Ijeoma of illicitly splitting bigger contracts of R1m or more to ensure that they were not subject to the stricter procurement requirements of tenders over R500,000.
It accuses him of obtaining higher quotes from bogus entities to ensure that the CSRI was awarded the contracts.
The university said he had done all this while never declaring to the institution that he had an interest in any doing work for the university.
It was also contrary to his fulltime employment contract, which required him to dedicate eight hours a day, five days a week to the university.
The Nigerian-born Ijeoma has cut a controversial figure at the university, making headlines for all the wrong reasons. These include:
● Being accused of being instrumental in irregularly enrolling students for courses. These included allegations that he irregularly admitted Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane to the public administration master’s programme and former health MEC Sindiswa Gomba for an honours degree. Both were later deregistered from the university;
● Not declaring to the university that the home affairs department had in 2013 revoked his SA citizenship after discovering his marriage to a South African citizen was bigamous. Ijeoma was legally married in Nigeria, but obtained naturalisation by marrying a South African. In 2019, the Bhisho high court confirmed home affairs had acted correctly in revoking his citizenship; and
● Being arrested in April for allegedly stealing a UFH car.
While on precautionary leave, Ijeoma submitted his resignation in February 2021.
The university announced he had resigned while facing serious allegations relating to misappropriation of university funds of R5m, failing to declare his business interests, conducting business without university approval and conflicts of interest.
The allegations included illicit admission of students, which the university said was a prerogative of university structures, not individual staff.
In its summons and particulars of claim in which it seeks to claim R4.7m in damages from Ijeoma — the amount his has been paid over some years to do work for the university — the university says the institution found out only in December 2020 that he was sole director of the CSRI and he had failed to disclose his interest in the .
It accused him directly of causing the university to contract with his to supply services by “falsifying quotes from fictional entities” and then selecting his own ’s quote as the most competitive.
Source: https://www.dispatchlive.co.za/news/2022-02-21-fort-hare-goes-to-court-over-illicit-millions/
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