As a former student of the Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Enugu, I consider the decision to probe the school barely three months after Enugu Governor, Mr. Peter Mbah came to power and three weeks after he inaugurated a 21member cabinet, including the Commissioner for Education, rather hasty.

Indeed, the first question that comes to one’s mind is, why the haste to probe IMT?  August 29, 2023, made it exactly three months after Governor Peter Mbah was sworn-in as Enugu’s Chief Executive.  On August 10, less than one month ago, the Governor inaugurated his 21-member cabinet, including the commissioner for education under whose ministry’s supervision IMT statutorily falls. On August 21, the Governor, through the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Prof. Chidiebere Onyia, set up an eight-man investigative panel to probe IMT!   The probe panel, aka ‘Committee of Inquiry into the Accounts, Management Practices and Staff Conduct of IMT’, has Prof. Ed Nwobodo as Chairman and Chinenye Angela as Secretary.

Other members are Osita Onuma, Dr Ada Nwonye, Barr. Lilian Ikwueze, Amb. Judy Nweke, Dr. Moses Otiji and Vincent Onyeabor. Inaugurating the Committee at the Government House, Enugu, on Monday, August 21, 2023, Governor Mbah said it was constituted to “ensure a certain level of credibility in the institution.”   Expressing his confidence in the ability of the leadership and members of the Committee to deliver on their mandate, Mbah, who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Prof. Chidiebere Onyia, said: “The work you are going to do will set a new course for that institution and for the rest of the action the government will take in the higher education space in Enugu State.”

The Governor then spelt out the Committee’s terms of reference, including: a) Evaluation of the legal and policy framework underpinning the constitution of the Institute’s ‘Business Committee’; b) Thorough analysis of the various categories of fees charged to students; c) Investigation of the methods of payment, designated accounts for transactions and the overall management of fee-related processes. Others are d) Assessment of the degree of adherence to pertinent laws, regulations, and institutional policies in the selection and appointment of staff members, particularly those occupying key positions such as Heads of Department and deputy Rector, among others; e) Identifying and scrutinizing all streams of revenue generation for the institution; f) Delving into the mechanisms for revenue collection;  and g) Proper accounting practices for remittances and the overall management of these financial resources.

Ordinarily, the foregoing are legitimate concerns that cannot but elicit remedial action by any government, new or old, desirous of cleansing the Augean Stable and instituting transparent processes in the conduct of public affairs. But on closer interrogation, the government, in instituting the ‘Investigative Panel’, would appear hard-put to explain that the motivation for the probe was entire altruistic.   In the first place, it bears repetition to ask,  just what is so urgent about an IMT probe barely three months after the Governor came to power and three weeks after he swore in his cabinet, including the Commissioner for Education whose ministry statutorily supervises all matters education in Enugu State as in elsewhere in Nigeria?

If the Commissioner is obviously yet to settle down as to be able to advise the Governor on what aspect of education in the state is in such a crisis as to warrant a probe, who, then, advised the Governor on the IMT probe?   Secondly, there is the issue of the composition of the Panel. The eight-man panel does not include any member from the sixLGA Enugu North (or Nsukka Cultural zone) where the Rector whose tenure is apparently being probed, comes from. While the SSG who set up the panel is from Enugu East, Prof. Ed Nwobodo (Chairman of the Panel) is from Enugu West; Chinenye Angela (Secretary) from Enugu East; Dr. Moses Otiji (member) from Enugu West; Barr. Lilian Ikwueze (member) from Enugu West; Dr. (Mrs.) Ada Nwonye (member) from Enugu West; Vincent Onyeabor (member) from Enugu East; Mr. Osita Onuma (member) from Enugu East and Ambassador BusinessJudy Nweke (member) from Anambra State. Enugu North has zero on the panel!

It is akin to an all-White jury sitting in judgment in a case involving an ‘erring’ Blackman in America. How impartial such a jury would be! So, the panel is, ab initio, clearly handicapped by its lack of balance.

Thirdly, the panel has only one month to submit its report. Of course, the Rector is expected to appear before it in the course of its sittings, perhaps not once but several times, to defend his actions or lack thereof as the leader of the IMT management team. And yet this Rector is the same man whose elder brother, Justice Chima Centus (C.C) Nweze, Enugu’s, nay the Igbo nation’s remaining Supreme Court Justice after the retirement of Justice Mary Odili, is still lying cold in the mortuary after his death on July 30 this year.

And you ask, when did the Igbo become so disrespectful of their dead that they would put hurdles in the way of their burial? The idea, it would appear, is that the Rector would be too distraught, because of the burden of his loss, to present a robust defence of his actions, or lack thereof, before the investigative panel thereby making it easy for him to be found guilty as charged.

That seems to have always been  the underhand tactic of wannabe oppressors in Enugu (think Chimaroke!) But how would that serve the cause of good governance in the coalcity state – seemingly programming a man to take a fall for a crime he might not have committed, that is?
The irony of this panel is that it was set up to probe a management team and, perhaps, a state administration that actually saved IMT from a certain death by asphyxiation from past maladministration.   Founded in 1973 along the line of the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) USA, with its first Rector, Professor Mark Okoro Chijioke, an electrical engineering professor and a former teacher at MIT, IMT began a steady climb-down from its glorious heights the very moment in July 1980 then Governor of Old Anambra State, Chief Jim Nwobodo announced, with a gubernatorial fiat, the establishment of then Anambra State University of Technology (ASUTECH). The establishment of ASUTECH was a good development, no doubt.

But, what happened was that Nwobodo simply seized practically all of IMT facilities to found ASUTECH, leaving the once internationally renowned school of management and technology as an insignificant ‘orphan’ that commanded little or no attention from the government of the day.   Between 1999 and 2007, former Governor Chimaroke Nnamani completed the routing of IMT when his government paid little or no attention at all to the school but channeled practically all its effort in the education sector towards the building of the permanent site of what later became Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) at his hometown, Agbani, in Agbani Local Council. The only good thing, however, was that Nnamani saw to the return of IMT property, after he successfully relocated ESUT to its permanent site at Agbani in 2006, a year before the expiration of his eight-year tenure in 2007.

• Oguejiofor-Abugu is a former Editor of The Guardian on Saturday and an alumnus of IMT, Enugu