The Governing Council of the University of Nigeria Nsukka (UNN) has sued the Nigerian Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for demanding that the university grant due process to Ugochukwu Uche, a professor at the university who was fired after he exposed academic fraud by one of his senior colleagues, Mrs. Uche Modum. UNN’s Governing Council sacked Mr. Uche after he insisted that Mrs. Modum, a former commissioner at the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), had falsified her credentials, including claiming non-existent publications in academic journals, to earn promotion to a professorship.
In several past reports, SaharaReporters had detailed several instances of forged or otherwise falsified documents presented by Mrs. Modum. Our reports also exposed the attempt by the UNN authorities to cover up these breaches, which includeMrs. Modum’s apparent forgery of a letter from a top American journal purportedly accepting two of her papers for publication, her use of multiple dates of birth, a falsification of her work experience in the US, and inclusion of several nonexistent publications in her official CV.
Despite these gaps, the Emmanuel Ukala-led UNN council notonly exonerated Mrs. Modum but also ordered her accuser and whistleblower, Mr. Uche, to retract his allegation of fraud against her and tender an apology to her. SaharaReporters learned that the whistleblower refused, remarking that the investigation that cleared Mrs. Modum was irregular and questionable.
A member of the council told a correspondent of SaharaReporters that some members were unhappy with the role played by Mr. Ukala in the whole process. The member disclosed that the chairman of the Governing Council was determined to clear Mrs. Modum of the allegations against her, adding that the evidence against her was “substantial and incontrovertible.”
In the midst of the controversy, the Nigerian Human Rights Commission wrote to UNN’s Governing Council warning against punishing the whistleblower without first informing him of his alleged offenses and giving him the opportunity to respond.
The source within the council told SaharaReporters that Mr. Ukala virtually pushed the council into firing Mr. Uche, insisting that the NHRC had no right to dictate to his council. The source added that Mr. Ukala arm-twisted council members to approve the filing of a lawsuit against the human rights body for warning the council to respect the whistleblower’s right to fair hearing. “After the Nigeria Human Rights Commission stepped in and requested due process hearing for Professor Ugochukwu Uche, Ukala vowed to do everything within his power to protect ProfessorModum,” said the source.
Mr. Ukala subsequently hired three Senior Advocates of Nigeria, including Joseph Bodurin Daudu, to sue the NHRC. SaharaReporters learned that the human rights group has also retained a law firm to represent it in the case.
Meanwhile, as the two sides prepare to square off in court, sources within UNN have briefed SaharaReporters on fresh new evidence that Mrs. Modum inflated as well as falsified her credentials to enable her to gain promotion to the rank of professor in the Department of Accountancy at the university.
SaharaReporters has obtained a self-incriminating email dated February 15, 2013, which Mrs. Modum sent to Kathy Williams, the editor of a top American journal, Strategic Finance (formerly Management Accounting). The said email was written to counter a letter from Ms. Williams, dated June 24, 2011, which disowned the forged acceptance letter that Mrs. Modum had submitted to the UNN authorities during her 1995 professorial appraisal. The forged letter, dated September 2, 1991, and purportedly signed by Erwin Koval,accepted two of Mrs. Modum’s articles for publication in Management Accounting, the official journal of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), formerly National Association of Accountants (NAA). The articles were listed as“Accounting information system: A case for quality
Control” and “Computer networks and organizational structure: a case for distributed systems.”
In her disavowal letter, Kathy Williams explained that Mr. Koval, who purportedly signed the acceptance letter, retired in September 1989, two years before the date on the forged letter. She also pointed out that the letter was written on letterhead the journal had used when it was based in New York, before the relocation of the journal’s editorial offices to New Jersey in 1984. Kathy Williams also explained that the name of their association stated on the forged letter, NAA, had also been changed to IMA before the date on the forged letter.
In her garbled email to Cathy Williams, Mrs. Modum bold-facedly stated, “evaluate again that maybe, given the movement and complex changes that took place in your office then whether the dating on the said acceptance letter which is September 2, 1991 could have been a genuine error since you said that the said editor retired in September 1989 or could have been mistake/ mixup by staffer/ typist—who knows?”
Our sources at UNN disclosed that Mrs. Modum’s use of the “typist excuse” was similar to an excuse she used in an attempt to cover up another apparent case of forgery and falsification. When it was found that her 2008 official CV published by UNN contained several ‘published journal articles’ (with such details as titles, volumes, dates and page numbers), that did not exist, Mrs. Modum tried to wriggle out by claiming that her CV was only a draft her typist erroneously posted. Yet, as head of department, she had officially forwarded the said CV along with her colleagues’ to the UNN authorities. Besides, she had used the same CV to gain doctoral supervision status at UNN.
Even after this attempt to deny the 2008 CV, which also contained the false claim that she had worked as an accountant/ auditor in the nonexistent ‘Jones and Jones Inc.,’ a certified public accounting firm based in Dayton Ohio’, in 2009 she caused a replica of the same CV to be circulated to the entire members of the UNN Senate. The only difference was that the details of the 17 journal articles she had earlier claimed were expunged and replaced with a more inflated andfalse claim that she had “published over 25 journal articles”.
Confronted with Mrs. Modum’s email to Ms. Williams, a member of the UNN Governing Council admitted that the document appeared to throw light on how the controversial academic presented a letter written on discarded letterhead and allegedly signed by an editor who had retired at the time the forged acceptance letter was dated.
In the email to Ms. Williams, Mrs. Modum specifically admitted that she had corresponded with the journal around 1982. SaharaReporters learned that she had then submitted an article to the journal, but it was not accepted for publication. At that time, Mr. Koval was the editor and the journal was based in New York. Mrs. Modum was apparently not aware that the editor and location of the journal had changed before she forged the 1991 acceptance letter.
Mrs. Modum’s email also tried to explain why Management Accounting journal eventually did not publish the two papers that it purportedly accepted. She claimed, “AFTER A LONG WAIT WITHOUT HEARING ANYTHING FROM THE PUBLISHER, I THEN PUBLISHED THEM IN ANOTHER JOURNAL”. She further claimed that “THE COUNCIL PANEL SET UP TO LOOK INTO THE ALLEGATION FOUND THE ALLEGATIONS FALSE BECAUSE THEY SIGHTED THE TWO ARTICLES AND ASCERTAINED THAT THEY WERE ACTUALLY PUBLISHED IN ANOTHER JOURNAL!!!” Surprisingly she did not state when and where the two papers were purportedly published.
Officials of the UNN have also so far refused to release the report of the investigation that reportedly cleared Mrs. Modum. Instead, they harangued Mr. Ugochukwu Uche, who exposed the fraud when he served as Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at UNN, to apologize to the woman whose forgeries he exposed. In an apparent haste to shield Mrs. Modum, the university flouted a directive from the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) that Mr. Uche’s right to fair hearing be respected.
After UNN ignored NHRC and continued threatening to sanction Mr. Uche, the whistleblower petitioned the 7th Federal House of Representatives, which directed all parties to maintain the status quo and resolve the matter internallywithin one month, failing which there would be a public hearing on the matter. A source at the university told SaharaReporters that the Governing Council was scared that a public hearing would expose the cover up. In a prompt response to the lawmakers, UNN Vice Chancellor Benjamin Chukwuma Ozumba stated that the Council had suspended action on the matter. He asked for more time to enable the Council to look into the matter, adding that the existing decision was that of a previous Council.
Instead of looking into the matter as promised, the university tried to pressure Mr. Uche to withdraw his report on Mrs. Modum’s forgeries so as to “close the case.” He however explained to university officials that it was untenable for him to “close the case” when the authorities had unjustly accused him of committing “character assassination without concrete facts.” Aware that removing the allegation that Mr. Uche had lied against Mrs. Modum might necessitate revisiting the case against her, the Emmanuel Ukala-led Council simply waited for the tenure of the 7th National Assembly to come to an end and then sacked Mr. Uche.
The NHRC subsequently announced a suspension of the sack and gave UNN two weeks to submit all its trial documents on the matter. Mr. Ukala refused to comply and informed the UNN Council that he would hire some top lawyers to challenge the jurisdiction of NHRC on the matter.
A former member of the Governing Council of UNN told SaharaReporters that Mr. Ukala would never release the report as it would show that the Council did its utmost to protect Mrs. Modum “whose husband, Professor Paul Modum, is very influential within and outside UNN.”
Our sources revealed that the papers listed in Mrs. Modum’s forged acceptance letter were never published elsewhere, therefore no publications could have been seen by members of the university panel that purportedly investigated Mr. Uche’s allegations. “This fact explains why, despite the enormous pressure mounted on Council members by the then Vice Chancellor, Prof. Bartho Okolo, to sack Professor Uche, the majority of Council members at the time refused to do so,” said a source who served at the time. SaharaReporters learned that a former deputy vice chancellor under Mr. Okolo even refused to sign the report that cleared Mrs. Modum.
Our correspondent also remarked that Mrs. Modum’s email to Kathy Williams also threw more light on another aspect of her apparent forgeries and falsifications. Her 1982 submission, which she admitted was rejected by the journal for publication, was titled “Cost Accounting: an Historical Perspective.” Thirteen years later, during her 1995 professorial appraisal, she listed the same article as having been accepted for publication as a chapter in a book titled Business Management Topics, which was supposed to be published by the Department of Management at UNN. Astonishingly, the picture changed again in her 2008 official CV. The same paper was listed as having been published by Management Accounting in 1991. This is the same journal that she admitted in the email rejected the article for publication around 1982.
After her 2008 falsified CV was exposed, the UNN authorities swiftly withdrew it from their website. Her current profile on the UNN website now simply claims that she has “published over 30 journal articles.” Many of her colleagues insist that although a number of her junior colleagues have been coerced to include her name as a joint author in their recent works since her forgeries were exposed, she still does not have anything close to the more than 30 published journal articles now attributed to her. A source at the university wondered why she has since 2009 refused to release details of her published journal articles, which should be the pride of any scholar. “Doing so will further expose her forgeries. And it is for the same reason that the UNN authorities under Ukala will also never release the report of the Council committee that investigated her,” the colleague concluded.