‘KALU HAS NO DEGREE CERTIFICATE TO BE REVOKED’

Former governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, has been advised to face his certificate scandal alone without dragging the state Governor, Chief Theodore Orji, into the messy affair, which was already in the public domain before the present administration came to power.

Kalu had reportedly cried out over what he regarded as a politically-motivated move by his successor to revoke a degree certificate awarded him by the Abia State University, Uturu (ABSU), following the completion of his university education.

The former governor’s university education was alleged to have been truncated at the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) several years before he became Abia State governor in 1999.

But in a statement issued in reaction to Kalu’s claims of being victimised over his acquired degree certificate, the Chief Press Secretary (CPS) to Orji, Mr. Ugochukwu Emezue, said Kalu was sounding false alarm as he had no degree certificate from ABSU to be revoked.

According to him, investigations by the university authorities have revealed that Kalu was never a student of ABSU as there was no record to show that he was formally admitted into the state university when he was governor and visitor to the university.

The CPS explained that the ABSU Senate had launched investigations into the certificate scandal, following a petition against the former governor alleging that he was “not properly admitted” into ABSU, hence the claim of his graduation and award of certificate “is neither here nor there.”

“The petitioner claimed that Kalu arm twisted the school authorities to admit him while he was the governor, following public outcry then that the state governor was not a graduate,” Emezue said, adding that: “The petitioner also claimed that Kalu as the governor only came to school for two semesters.”

Emezue further stated that the panel set up by ABSU Senate had discovered that the transcript Kalu sent to ABSU from UNIMAID did not bear the letter head of the institution.

The panel’s report, Emezue alleged, also showed that Kalu did not matriculate with other fresh students at the period he claimed he was admitted as required by the university regulation having transferred from another university 

Source: Thisday