If Abimbola Oyefesobi began her five-year tenure as the registrar of the Ogun State Polytechnic of Health and Allied Sciences (OSPOHAS) on December 3, 2018, she no longer qualifies to be registrar. If she began on February 4, 2019, she has just two months until she completes her five-year tenure.

Either way, Oyefesobi does not qualify for an extension of service, but a governing council meeting held on December 14 reached a resolution to extend her tenure by two years, some staff have reported.

Oyefesobi was appointed as OSPOHAS registrar effective December 3, 2018. However, to assume her new role, she needed to first exit her previous position as the deputy registrar of the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta (MAPOLY).

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SUBSTANTIVE REGISTRAR OR PART-TIME STAFF OR BOTH?

In her acceptance letter to the provost of OSPOHAS, she requested a secondment to his institution with immediate effect, to buy time to process her exit and transfer of service from MAPOLY.

As she resumed, it was unclear to staff whether she was at OSPOHAS as the substantive registrar or a part-time staff, and a looming allegation was that the registrar assumed dual civil service roles –registrar in OSPOHAS and deputy registrar in MAPOLY.

Gbenga Adeboye, OSPOHAS’s public relations officer (PRO), denied these allegations.

“Any appointee at OSPOHAS is mandated to write a resumption letter which will show the time the person intends to resume. The letter must be written within two weeks of acceptance of offer. The appointee has the liberty to indicate on the resumption letter when he/she will resume for duty,” he wrote in response to FIJ’s queries.

“The allegation that she acted on her own authority is spurious because she had no authority until she had assumed duties on the 4th of February 2019. What happened was that even though she had been appointed registrar at OSPOHAS, she had to perfect her disengagement from MAPOLY, and at that material time, there was no governing council at MAPOLY, hence the available authority acted accordingly based on her request, which was an issue between her and the institution.”

He confirmed that Oyefesobi is the substantive registrar of OSPOHAS and is no longer a staff at MAPOLY. He, however, stated that the confusion might have arisen from her name being on the nominal roll of MAPOLY.

That’s the standard practise for officers who take the secondment route, he said, adding that the matter of secondment was a non-issue.

To confirm Oyefesobi’s employment status at MAPOLY, FIJ called A.A. Sarami, the institution’s public relations officer, who confirmed that the registrar no longer worked with MAPOLY but for the Ogun State Polytechnic of Health and Allied Sciences.

When asked when she left MAPOLY, he said December 2018.

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POWER RESIDES WITH THE GOV’T, NOT LAW

The Ogun State College of Health and Technology Law (Amended) 2008 states:

“The registrar shall hold office for a period of five years on such terms and conditions as may be specified in his instrument of appointment.”

Furthermore, the Federal Polytechnic Act (2019) as amended, states that a registrar is only entitled to a single tenure of five years beginning from the date of their appointment, and “where a registrar has held office for five years or less from the commencement of this Act, he shall be deemed to have served his final term of office”.

Oyefesobi’s appointment date was December 3, 2019; and December 3, 2023, made it five years since she was appointed registrar.

Consequently, any further extension of Oyefesobi’s tenure will be a violation of the law. Yet, the registrar has remained in office past her fifth year anniversary on December 3, and has been granted a two-year extension of service, said staff who pleaded anonymity.

In a series of messages shared with FIJ, one of the concerned staff wrote:

“The Polytechnic Act according to the NBTE stipulates a five-year single tenure for all principal officers of the polytechnics in Nigeria. The law is everywhere in Nigeria. Why will the governing council or government give anyone an extension? It is illegal! Apart from that, the woman is on secondment from MAPOLY with all evidence. The attached letter is very clear. Taking the salary of a substantive registrar is illegal in the first place. On what basis is the appointment going to be extended? As a staff of the Ogun State Polytechnic of Health that she is not? Is it good for the council to have tolerated that in the first place? And they are adding salt to injury by allowing the illegal stay of another school staff in the polytechnic. The council chairman as a SAN should know.”

Another staff told FIJ that Oyefesobi has come of age but refuses to retire.

“She went to court to swear an affidavit (a sworn declaration of age). She changed her appointment to a secondment and is receiving payment for a substantive appointment, which is against the law. She should be in ICPC custody for that,” the staff said.

In defence, the PRO stated that the decision to continue service as the registrar was not Oyefesobi’s prerogative unless she decided to resign from her position. The fact is that the Ogun State Government, through relevant authorities, appointed Oyefesobi as registrar of OSPOHAS after due process. It then follows logically that her exit can only come through the same process, he said.

“The governing council of OSPOHAS meets regularly to discuss the affairs of the school, and their decisions are backed by extant laws. Good enough, the council is chaired by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).”

Leke Oyeniran, a lawyer and founder of the Learned Library, however, stated that in reference to the polytechnic’s law, what happened is an illegality because there was a conscious exclusion of a provision to extend the tenure of the registrar.

“I could have argued that the fact that it was not included does not imply that it cannot happen. But if you look at the provision for the provost, it was expressly mentioned,” said Oyeniran.

“If we are to judge by the provost’s provision, if we are to put them side by side, we will be forced to come to the conclusion that it appears there is an illegality.”

According to the Ogun State College of Health and Technology Law (Amended) 2008, “the provost shall be eligible for re-appointment for not more than another term of four years” after already holding the position for four years in the first instance.

On Wednesday, FIJ called Kunle Kalejaiye, the chairman of OSPOHAS’ governing council to confirm the status of the registrar’s appointment and the veracity of the report that the governing council intended to extend Oyefesobi’s tenure.

Following a brief introduction and halfway into relating the queries to him, Kalejaiye hung up the phone call. Three other attempts to call his line failed as he declined a second phone call and had blocked our line by the third and fourth attempts.

FIJ later called Oyefesobi to seek her response to the allegations, but she directed us to Adeboye, the PRO, whom she said was in the best position to communicate her employment history and status.

Over a series of phone calls and messages, Adeboye stated that the allegations against the registrar were a function of internal politics, a case of the old resisting the new.

In the past four years, Oyefesobi has been accused of corruption, misappropriation of funds and abuse of power, and has had multiple petitions written against her.

In 2018, she was reported for deducting N7,500 from the salaries of staff for verifications she never carried out, and then there were allegations that although the institution collected money from students for files, provision was not made for several students.

Most recently, a sum of N36 million was approved for the purchase of a new vehicle for her despite having a functional vehicle, a staff of the institution who prefers to remain anonymous said.

In the institution’s official response, the PRO wrote, “There have been petitions against the registrar for the past three years to the police, DSS and others over one unfounded allegation or the other, and after investigation by relevant authorities including the governing council, she has always come out unscathed.

“However, it is worth emphasising that what is happening to Mrs Oyefesobi is resistance by the old order. Some people within the institution are used to the old ways of doing things. The moment she came in and introduced radical administrative changes, naturally, some people were averse to the changes, hence the campaign of calumny against her person.”

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In the petition he referred to, the registrar was accused of, among several wrongdoings, conniving with staff who pilfered the institution’s pharmaceutical resources for personal gains and suppressing laid-down administrative rules.

In response to these allegations, Adeboye wrote:

“The allegation of abuse of power and misappropriation of funds is as unfounded as ridiculous. Take, for instance, the issue of N7,500 certificate verification. It is a standard practise for any organisation to verify the certificates of its new employees, especially in this age of fake certificates.

“What’s obtained at OSPOHAS is a N7,500 deduction for this purpose. And the money remains in the school account, not any individual’s account. The verification is then done in batches of employees so as to save cost, because the N7,500, for instance, is taken from an employee with a first degree from Ahmadu Bello University and a second degree from the University of Nigeria. Simple arithmetic will show that the money is grossly inadequate if someone is to go to those places.

“Also absurd is the allegation that the registrar bought herself a new car. No. The governing council deemed it fit to buy a new car for the registrar, and it was procured for her. The allegation of the registrar selling drugs at the school health centre is unfortunate and unfounded.”