The professor, punished for exam fraud by her university, says PREMIUM TIMES ruined her chances of becoming a SAN by reporting the matter.
Benedicta Daudu, a professor who was sanctioned for examination misconduct at the University of Jos (UNIJOS) in 2016, has sued PREMIUM TIMES for defamation over the newspaper's extensive reporting on her examination malpractice scandal.
She seeks a whopping N7 billion in damages.
Mrs Daudu, currently a lecturer and professor at the Taraba State University, filed the defamation suit at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja in March following the newspaper's latest reporting about her.
In May 2016, Mrs Daudu was caught with "foreign materials" containing answers during a second-semester examination that she was taking as a master's student of Research and Public Policy at the Faculty of Social Sciences of UNIJOS.
She was then an associate professor of law and Head of the Department of Jurisprudence and International Law of the Faculty of Law at the university but decided to pursue another master's degree in social sciences.
After finding her guilty of examination misconduct, the university suspended her from the master's programme for one academic session and suspended her for six months as a staff member.
PREMIUM TIMES first reported the scandal while Mrs Daudu served as a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACAC). As a result of the scandal, she stepped down from the committee.
In September 2023, PREMIUM TIMES reported that despite her examination misconduct scandal, she made the shortlist of applicants for the coveted rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
Eventually, she did not make the final list of the successful applicants released by the Legal Practitioners' Privileges Committee (LPPC) in October 2023.
Mrs Daudu said the PREMIUM TIMES reports of 15 September 2023 and 12 October 2023 maliciously damaged her reputation and qualifications and ruined her chances of becoming a SAN.
The N7 billion case
In the suit number marked FCT/HC/CV/2024 filed on 11 March, Mrs Daudu claimed that the reports about her cheating scandal were false.
According to her, the reports were published to rubbish her good name, integrity, professional standing, and value and ruin her chances in the final lap of the SAN conferment.
Mrs Daudu claimed there "is no scintilla of truth" in PREMIUM TIMES' "wicked publications".
She said she was only "wrongfully accused of being in possession of unauthorised academic material during an examination by some staff (members) of the university."
She claimed she was "not found guilty of the crimes of cheating and examination malpractice or dismissed indefinitely as a lecturer by the University of Jos."
The lawyer also emphasised that she was not sacked as a Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption (PACAC) member.
According to her, the reports maliciously portrayed her as unfit to be conferred with the SAN rank, a misfit in the legal profession and a bad example of a teacher and mentor.
She also criticised PREMIUM TIMES for not allowing her to respond to the allegations before publishing the reports.
As a result, she is seeking N7 billion in damages--N2 billion for general damages related to the two reports and N5 billion for exemplary damages due to what she described as the publication's extreme malice.
Additionally, she asked the court to compel PREMIUM TIMES to retract the allegedly libellous publications and issue public apologies in five national newspapers, five national television stations, and five national radio stations.
The exam scandal: The '11 pieces of paper'
In 2016, Mrs Daudu, already a doctorate degree holder and then Acting Head of the Department of International Law and Jurisprudence at UNIJOS, was pursuing a second master's degree in Research and Public Policy (MRPP) in the Faculty of Social Science at the same university.
During a second-semester examination for the course "Global Concept of Public Policy" (MRPP 513), she was caught with 11 pieces of paper containing revision notes relevant to her exam. The invigilator, Joshua Manga, reported her to the university authorities.
Following this incident, the Senate Examination Misconduct Committee tried her and recommended that she be suspended from the master's programme for two semesters. Additionally, the university suspended her as a staff member for six months and referred her case to the Council/Senate Disciplinary Committee for further action.
However, instead of appearing before the staff disciplinary committee, Mrs Daudu filed a suit at the National Industrial Court in Abuja to stop the proceedings.
During the trial, she admitted under cross-examination that "revision notes" were found in her possession. She also confirmed that the content was relevant to the examination, but she said she had no intention of using the papers during the exam. This contrasts with her new claim in the suit she filed against PREMIUM TIMES that she was "wrongfully" accused of being in possession of "foreign materials".
She also said during the proceedings that she was only challenging her suspension as a university staff member, not her suspension as a student, on account of examination misconduct.
On 17 October 2019, the court dismissed her suit, affirming the university's right to take disciplinary action against her.
The judge ruled that her suspension from the university did not violate her right to a fair hearing and that the university was within its rights to initiate further disciplinary actions after suspending her as a staff member.
Mrs Daudu, dissatisfied with the ruling, appealed the decision but later resigned from her position at UNIJOS in November 2019.
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Settlement
While her appeal was pending, Mrs Daudu and UNIJOS decided to settle the matter out of court.
The settlement, filed at the Court of Appeal in Abuja on 31 March 2021, allowed her to resign from the university and continue her studies after she served one academic session of suspension.
The university also agreed to pay her withheld half salaries for the six months she was on suspension as a staff member.
On her part, she agreed to discontinue her appeal against the university.
Agreement sparks controversy, draws criticism
This settlement, however, sparked controversy and criticism.
About two months after the settlement, some media outlets reported that UNIJOS had reinstated Mrs Daudu as a staff member after clearing her of examination misconduct allegations.
The media publications angered the university, which quickly issued a rejoinder to deny it.
The university's registrar, Monday Danjem, clarified in the rejoinder that Mrs Daudu "was never absolved of wrongdoing regarding the allegation of examination misconduct".
In fact, according to the statement, her court case never challenged the examination misconduct allegation "for which she served a period of suspension as a student."
