Iwe: My Worst Moment at MOUAU Was When ReformWas Mistaken for Hostility

Prof. Maduebibisi Ofo Iwe is a certified Food Scientist (CFS), and sixth Vice Chancellor of Micahel Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike (MOUAU)in Abia State whose term is winding down. He tells BONIFACE OKORO, how he managed the affairs of the university in the last five years, his achievements, challenges and how staff withdrew over 100 litigations against the university as well as allegations of financial impropriety against his administration… Excerpts

Your tenure will elapse in February 2026 and your successor is yet to emerge. When will that happen?

Yes, but we are still within the period. We are supposed to produce my successor within six months, that is between September, 2025 and March, 2026. So, we are still on it, but then it’s entirely a (Governing) Council business. It’s not Vice-Chancellor’s business.

You’ve been almost five years on the saddle, what would you consider your legacies as Vice-Chancellor, and your worst moment in the University?

Well, it would have been foolhardy to expect that having put the right foot forward, that all my colleagues would have followed immediately, but that was not the case. We were still in a situation where not everybody was following, but thank God that the majority understood where we were going and followed. The other worse moment should have been on February 6th, 2024 when we were trying to fix the University in a way that it will be easy for us to run things, especially among students, but we were misunderstood and students were mobilized against us. That should have been our worst moment.

As for my achievements, I had a vision to mobilise the university to positive thinking, positive action, productivity and progressive programmes. I think we achieved it. The second one is that we expanded the university in terms of infrastructure and location. You know, people don’t understand what it means to start a new campus entirely as we did at the Permanent Site in Olori and we are still doing.We were able to capture our students through a biometric process and have been able to develop a database from where we can give up-to-date information within 24 hours about students. Again, we have completely digitalized our Bursary Department. This makes our accounting or financial transactions smooth and free from much human interference. There was an Audit Report an Online newspaper published, most of the so-called infractions then, not now, were cases of displacement or misplacement of records by staff. It’s not that the records were not there, they were displacing records. At the time the Auditors came, the records were not readily provided. So, there is nothing like embezzlement of funds here. Now, due to what we have done in the Bursary, we can easily send our report straight to the Auditor-General or Accountant-General’s office.We have done similar thing with University Library. We started the digitalization of our operations with the Senate meetings, within three months of my assumption of office. With e-Senate, we have saved a lot of funds on paper and so on.Again, the issue of transcript became a very big problem in this University because people were trading on it. People were doing all manner of things here, but today we have fixed everything about transcript.It’s also gone online.

In December, 2025, an online newspaper you referred to, published a report from the Auditor-General’s office, accusing your institution of spending N5 billion illegally and failed to remit N578 million IGR to the Federal Government between 2021 – 2022. What is your response to that?

Well, I shouldn’t be venturing into this because there’s an opinion that the publication should be a (Governing) Council matter, but because I made a comment about that report this week when I held a meeting with all staff of the University, and because some other people in the University are trying to develop interest in the matter, I will just say a few things. I’m a researcher. I’m a scientist. I don’t often bother myself about things that don’t have research content. People just wake up and begin to talk about things or write about things they do not know or understand. I don’t read them.

Let me take for instance the issue of N578 million as IGR reported by the online newspaper: We all here know that my administration started in March, 2021 when the whole world was still trying to wake up from the global shutdown of the COVID-19 pandemic that happened in 2020. There was no activity in the University that should generate IGR. So that shows you that something must have been wrong with whatever the person wanted to write. I’m not sure that this University made an IGR of that value in 2021.The same thing happened in 2022 when all public universities in Nigeria went on strike for eight months. Nobody was here producing crop, producing animal, producing chicken or egg. Nobody was here trading on anything. Come to think of it, what are the sources of the IGR that you may be talking about?In the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, we have debated and pleaded with those that are concerned to understand that the charges paid by students of Nigerian universities should not be regarded as IGR because they are tied to services. They are service charges and asking for a part of the service charges to be returned to the government undermines our position that such charges don’t constitute Internally Generated Revenue (IGR).So, due to the situation we found ourselves in 2021 and 2022, I can’t see this University generating that amount of money. It couldn’t be real. As I explained to staff of the University, I believe that there is an attempt to find a way to make my administration culpable to financial infractions, because most of the things they wrote about us didn’t happen in my administration. I see a situation where they grab some information from here, grab from there, stitch them together and then want to incite the public against my administration and the University, which is not right.

Why do you think anybody would do that?

I wouldn’t know because so far, we have been committed to serving this University in the best possible way. We have tried to do things right and to do the right things in the last five years. We have tried to change the narrative in terms of behavior of students, in terms of behavior of staff, in terms of interpersonal relationship among staff. There was a time all these was zero and the University was unable to attract friends, but now, we have opened up the University to the outside world to say we are here. In fact, at least this year I’m very happy that we have sent out a student to China on full scholarship by China. That’s the kind of thing we are looking up to getting back to. Some of our staff have been publishing in very high impact journals and they have been recognised around the world. Some of them have gotten into very serious research funding because we provided the enabling environment.By God’s grace, the Federal Government has done something very good in Umudike, even though we are not yet talking about it so loudly, and that is the completion of the Energising Education Project (EEP) that built our solar plant. We now have 24 hours power supply in Umudike. It wasn’t like that three years ago.So we have light 24 hours and every serious researcher is busy in the laboratory.We have tried to reorient the University and make sure that none of our programmes is lost, rather we have gained more. In the last admission we gained more than 1,500 students for the University, which was not there before. We have introduced new courses, very crucial courses like Food Engineering, Embedded Artificial Intelligence, Mechatronics, etc. which will be verified this month. We have also equipped our laboratories. We have invested heavily in the equipping our laboratories.The Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nigerian (COREN) visited us about two months ago for accreditation and sent me a gratifying report that some of the equipment we have in Umudike are not available in any other University in Nigeria.For example, we have the Amino Acid Analyzer, and several other equipment which are not anywhere else in Southeast.

A report listed 32 violations of the Public Procurement Act, including alleged payment of severance allowance in excess of N44 million to your predecessor. How true are they?

I never did. I never paid such money. As a matter of fact, the issue of payment of severance allowance to former Vice-Chancellors is an act of the Governing Council. It’s not any person’s act, but it didn’t happen in my time. I didn’t pay anybody such money. I didn’t meet any outstanding severance allowance for my predecessor. Those payments must have been made before I came. That’s why I’m telling you that the authors of those online reports were bringing things from here and there, just to deceive the public to think it happened in my administration.I am sure you also read that there are contracts awarded without evidence of execution as well as uncompleted projects for which monies were paid in full. The question is: where are the contracts and uncompleted projects under my administration? None. I met all the abandoned projects for which money have been expended. If you know the history of this University, you will know the administration where abandoned projects featured prominently. So, the sponsors and authors of those stories intended to paint a picture of financial misappropriation against my administration and use it to incite the public. What I do in such situations is go into my room and pray and hand them over to God so that God will take care of them.

There is another allegation that your University plans to splash N252 million on three vehicles for the Pro-Chancellor and two others. Why buy vehicles when you are almost exiting office?

Your question is very interesting and I would like to take it from where you ended, which is why I’m interested in spending money before I leave office. The issue of spending money is not a day’s business. It’s a business that has to do with appropriation and no appropriation comes overnight.Having said that, let me correct the impression that the amount of money that is being quoted by the online newspaper has anything to do with 2026, we have not seen our budget for 2026. Nobody has.Normally, government gives you what is known as an envelope. When you open the envelope, you match the content with the needs of the University. I’m sure that if you mentioned N252 million or so, that should even belong to 2025 appropriation. That is the last appropriation which has not even been expended.Let me also say quickly that we have not gotten our 2024 appropriation. The 2025 appropriation for instance was articulated in 2024 and whatever price that was available then was what was used to articulate what a vehicle should cost. When we finish that, we normally present our articulation to government through the Joint Committee on Appropriation of the Ministry of Agriculture, which is where we draw our capital expenditure from.For 2025 which is where the N252 million or thereabout that was published was captured, it required us going to the Ministerial Tenders Board to get approval to spend that money. Of course, before even it gets to the that level, between the envelope and the Joint Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture, we go through our procurement processes in the University. First of all, we go through what we call the University Procurement Planning Committee (UPPC) that will say what the cost of the vehicles should be.The UPPC will meet when contractors submit their quotations and then after that, it gets to the University Tenders Board (UTB) that agrees with the Planning Committee that this is what this thing should cost. Now when you get to the Tenders Board and there is a cost that could be awarded in the University, it will be awarded, but if it cannot be awarded in the University, it will go to the Ministerial Tenders Board. So, it’s not a question of the VC getting up to go and spend money. No, not at all.There are levels of checks and balances and approvals before you can spend government funds. It’s not a one- man show. It’s not about what the VC wants or whatever, it is appropriation.I therefore see such a publication as just a way of trying to smear an administration, because it shows that the person that authored the story doesn’t understand the process of procurement. Procurement is not a day affair. It’s not also a one-person affair. It’s something that everybody is involved. In fact, people that are involved are so many. It’s also not a matter of corruption or no corruption because there are checks and balances. I think that’s what I would like to say about that.

Was there a plan to buy those vehicles and it was captured in the budget?

Yes. It was for 2025, not 2026, and that budget was prepared in 2024.The plan went through relevant authorities and committees and processes. The University has to spend the money for which it was approved whenever it’s released.It has not been released. 2024 appropriation has not been released. 2025 has not been released. We can only spend when what is budgeted and approved is released.

Do you think you have stepped on toes?

(Laughs) I have not stepped on any toes here because I’m very conscious of myself and conscious of where I’m reporting back to every day. I report back to God in Heaven every day. I’ve not stepped on any toes. I’m very sure of that. Those who did what they wanted to do, did it on their own. For example, somebody got up here and said he was resigning and resigned, then wanted to come back and we told the person what government position is on that. I don’t think I stepped on the person’s toes. I did not ask the person to resign.Again, one of the young ladies that worked with me, who I tried to guide properly and protect her career interest got up one day and started running out of her senses. I simply directed relevant committee of the University to investigate her and whatever comes out of the investigation, so be it. Let her face the rules of the University, and she left without official leave. So, I’ve not had any quarrel with any person. What I’ve done here in the past five years was to stitch a lot of torn clothes and then to make sure that everybody is happy. There’s nothing that came to this table that has lasted for more than one night. You bring your paper today, the next day you get my response. I have not owed anybody anything. Promotions that were standing in many years of arrears before I came in have been cleared. Those that had issues with the procedure were regularized and put through. More than 100 litigations against the University, which I inherited, were resolved and the litigants withdrew their cases from courts. You can go around the University, you will see that there is peace everywhere. Nobody is quarreling again.

Are there actions you took that you regret and would do them differently if the opportunity presents itself again?

I can’t remember. I have not taken any decision or actions unilaterally throughout my administration. My actions have been consistent with the law of the University. I respect the law, I implement the law. No paper comes to my table and I take a decision on it without asking question; that’s why I have Principal Officers, starting with the Registrar, the Bursar, the University Librarian, and, of course, my Deputy Vice-Chancellors. So, anything that comes, I study it. I know where to ask for advice. My Director of internal Audit is there to vet and advise, etc. So, anything that you bring now, I ask question. If I don’t receive answers or appropriate advice, I don’t take decision on it. With that my decisions have been consistent with the law or with the guideline or with what we call the Conditions of Service (COS) of the University. So, if one is guided in that way, I wonder what one should be regretting about.

What will you be doing when you formally leave office?

I really need to rest because I know I’ve spent my life with this University in the last five years. I’d like to have some time to rest.