Rivers Assembly orders arrest of PAMO varsity VC

Rivers State House of Assembly has ordered the immediate arrest of the Vice Chancellor of PAMO University of Medical Sciences, Professor Smith I. Jaja, over his repeated refusal to appear before the House committee.

The House ad hoc committee is probing the disbursement of scholarship funds to the institution.

The Assembly issued the warrant of arrest on Friday during its 53rd legislative sitting.

Martins Wachukwu, Special Assistant on Media to the Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly, disclosed the resolution in a statement on Friday.

According to the statement, the committee, headed by the Deputy Leader of the House, Dumle Maol, had invited the Vice Chancellor on several occasions to explain how funds released to the university under the scholarship arrangement were utilised.

The Assembly learnt that the university received over N29 billion from the Rivers State Government under the scholarship scheme.

The report also disclosed that the amount received did not correspond with the student enrolment figures.

The Assembly asked the Rivers State Government to set up a funds recovery committee to identify and recover all unaccounted funds allegedly in the possession of PAMO University and return the recovered money to the state’s Consolidated Revenue Account.

Speaking, the Speaker of the House, Martin Chike Amaewhule, lamented what he described as problems with the implementation of the scholarship agreement.

The Speaker frowned at discrepancies among documents submitted by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Accountant-General of the State.

“The documents are not consistent in their accounting of the funds released to the university.

“Based on the Assembly’s assessment of the records before it, only about N5 billion of the more than N29 billion released to PAMO University appeared to have been utilised,” he said.