Federal University, Oye Ekiti on Tuesday decried alleged assault on its Vice Chancellor, Prof. Abayomi Fasina, by suspected officials of the Special Fraud Unit, who insisted on delivering a letter to him in person.
This was contained in statement jointly signed by the Chief Information Officer to the VC, Foluso Ogunmodede, and Special Adviser on Media Matters to the VC, Wole Balogun, on behalf of the institution’s management.
“We want the whole world to know that this strange development has since thrown the whole university community into a serious tension and a state of apprehension,” they said in the statement titled, ‘Threats to the life of the VC of FUOYE — University Community.’
The statement read in detail: “The concern of many staff and students now is that if the VC could be assaulted without prior notice or invitation, who else is safe?
“We want the whole world to know that this strange development has since thrown the whole university community into a serious tension and a state of apprehension.”
“Some officers, who claimed to have come from the SFU allegedly to deliver a letter of invitation to the VC, insisted that the delivery must be made in person, this giving a red signal.
“The security personnel in the university suspected foul play when the suspected men could not provide a written clearance from the Ekiti State Commissioner of Police, but instead created unnecessary drama by making frantic efforts to find their way to the VC’s office with an obvious intention to whisk him away from the campus.
“The security men attached to the Central Administration Office of the university insisted that the strange men introduced themselves properly and also show incontrovertible evidence of the clearance from the federal security agencies attached to Ekiti State and the university. We have no doubt that these men were on a sinister mission.
“The people who came never contacted us or invited the VC before they came. There is no agency of government that has ever invited us that we did not honour their invitation.
“The ICPC, Senate Committee on Ethics, Privileges and Public Petitions and its counterpart in the House of Representatives have invited us and we honoured all these invitations. So, we do not have any record of evading or not honouring invitations by government agencies.
“This means that there is no basis for them to have done what they did. The manner in which they approached the matter showed clearly that they had sinister motives and that this could be a hatchet job.
“We consider this as a breach of security protocol and threat to the lives of the VC and the university community as a whole. We know the source of this sinister agenda! It is simply a case of fighting corruption and corruption fighting back.”