A group, Alliance for Defence, Democracy and Good Governance, has lamented that the intrigues at Father Adasu University, formerly Benue State University, Makurdi, prevented the vice chancellor, Professor Joe Iorapuu, from executing his vision for the state-owned institution.
The association also described the state government’s inability to back the vice chancellor and ensure that the university continued to implement reforms brought to it with precision as a wasted opportunity.
Its president, Dr Wole Akinjide, told journalists that in August 2023, in a letter, he drew the attention of the then vice chancellor, Professor Tor Iorapuu, about a visitation panel on a fact-finding mission through an unknown process to the university and requested the VC to resign because of ill intentions.
The letter reads: “Dear Professor Tor Iorapuu KSM, you will recall that sometime in August 2023, at about 9:37 am, I called you. Quite typical, you picked the call. You were on your way to Makurdi from Jos.
According to you, some developments required your urgent return to Makurdi. And it was for the same developments that I made the call to you. I read that the government had set up a visitation panel after a failed mockery attempt of an unknown process in a university system called the ‘Fact-Finding Committee’.
“The purpose of my call was simple. I requested that you resign your appointment as the vice chancellor of Benue State University. I made this request for the following reasons: From the inception of the new administration, the focus was on you and your university.
“The setting up of the Fact-finding Committee that visited the university was ill-intended.
The Visitation Panel followed this. I am sufficiently informed that other government agencies have sent teams to audit your activities. I am also informed that even your Council has set up all manner of panels to investigate your activities, including a forensic audit.
“Since the inception of this regime, there have been struggles to paint you black, to destroy you. Who wants to contaminate you? Who hates your peace? Who wants you to cease to be a human being, to become a puppet?”
