Chioma Obinna
8 September 2008
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) yesterday carpeted the Federal Government for withholding since 1992 the N500million naira take-off grants meant for the Nnamdi Azikiwe University Awka.
The group also called on the present administration to order immediate probe of the circumstances and personalities responsible for what they described as 'heinous crime'.
Specifically, the Acting Vice Chancellor of the Nnamdi Azikiwe Federal University, Awka, in Anambra State, South East Nigeria Professor Boniface Egboka had at the weekend reportedly raised alarm that the previous federal administrations since 1992 refused to release the original statutory take off grants meant for the University that is located at the heart of Igbo land. Report by authoritative sources stated that the funds were approved by the Federal Government for the institution's initial running and infrastructural costs when it was taken over by the Federal administration in 1992 and was reportedly fraudulently diverted to another institution in the northern part of the Country.
In a statement signed by the National Coordinator of HURIWA, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, the Rights Group condemned the delay in redressing this anomaly by the current administration even when it prides itself as having the respect for the rule of law and due processes.
The Rights group urged President Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar'Adua to direct his Federal Minister of Education Aja Nwachukwu to attend to this grave situation with all the urgency it deserves so as to ameliorate the infrastructural crises bedeviling the University.
Onwubiko stated that the withholding of the take-off grant of that Federal University located in the South Eastern region, already perceived rightly as being grossly marginalized and underdeveloped by the Federal administration over the years, could be viewed as the continuation of the regime of gross marginalization of the Igbo speaking people.
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