Prof Maduebibisi Ofo Iwe, a food scientist with over 40 years of research and university teaching experience, is the 6th Vice-Chancellor of the 34-year-old, federal government-owned Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Abia State, whose tenure is due to terminate on 28 February 2026.

He spoke with GORDI UDEAJAH and other journalists, giving insight into his administration and reacting to some recent contentious news publications by online platforms, declaring that he gave his life to the service of the University and is proud of the progress made, even as he inherited and resolved over 100 litigations without stepping on toes.

How did you address the scenario you met on assumption of office and manage to work without stepping on toes, having been selected from within the university on 1 March 2021?

I inherited more than 100 litigations filed against the university, which I resolved, and the litigants withdrew their cases from the courts. Palpable peace prevailed, and nobody is quarrelling again.

What I have done here in the past five years was to stitch a lot of torn clothes to make sure that everybody is happy. Nothing that came to this table lasted for more than one night. You bring your paper today; the next day, you get my response. I have not owed anybody anything or stepped on any toes. Promotions that had been standing in arrears for many years before I came in have been cleared. Those who had issues with the procedure were regularised and put through.

I have not taken any decision or action unilaterally. My actions are consistent with the law of the university. I respect and apply the law.

No paper comes to my table without me asking questions. That is why I have Principal Officers, starting with the Registrar, the Bursar, the University Librarian, and of course, my Deputy Vice-Chancellors. Anything that comes, I study. I know who to ask for advice. My Director of Internal Audit vets and advises. So, anything that is brought, I ask questions. If I don’t receive answers or appropriate advice, I don’t take a decision on it. With that, my decisions have been consistent with the law, within guidelines, or within the Conditions of Service (COS) of the University.

Just last month, December 2025, an online newspaper published a report citing it to have come from the Federal Auditor-General’s office, stating that your university expended five billion naira illegally and did not remit 578 million naira to the Federal Government from your 2021–2022 Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). Were you not aware of the report, because expectations were that your university would react to it?

There is an opinion that online newspaper publication should be a University Council matter; hence, I should not react. But because I made a comment about that report when I held a meeting with all staff of the University, and because some other people in the University are trying to develop interest in the matter, let me just say a few things.

I am a researcher and scientist. I don’t often bother myself about things that don’t have research content. When people just wake up and begin to talk or write about things they do not know or understand, such things don’t bother me. I don’t read them, but let me, for one reason or another, pass a few comments on this.

Let me take, for instance, the issue of the 578 million naira IGR as reported by the online newspaper. My administration started in March 2021, when the whole world was still trying to wake up from the global shutdown of the COVID-19 pandemic that happened in 2020.

There was no activity in the University that should generate IGR. So that shows something must have been wrong with whatever the person wanted to write. I’m not sure that this University made an IGR of that value in 2021.

The same thing happened in 2022 when all public universities in Nigeria went on strike for eight months. Nobody was here producing crops, animals, chickens, or eggs. Nobody was trading on anything. Come to think of it, what are the sources of the IGR you may be talking about?

In the Committee of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, we have debated and pleaded with those concerned to understand that charges paid by students of Nigerian universities should not be regarded as IGR because they are tied to services. They are service charges, and asking for a part of the service charges to be returned to the government undermines our position that such charges don’t constitute IGR.

So, due to the situation in 2021 and 2022, I can’t see this University generating that amount of money. It couldn’t be real.

As I explained to staff of the University, I believe there is an attempt to find a way to make my administration culpable for financial infractions because most of the things they wrote about us didn’t happen in my administration.

I see a situation where they grabbed some information from here, grabbed from there, stitched them together, and then want to incite the public against my administration and the University, which is not right.

Why do you think they did so or wanted to do so?

I wouldn’t know why they would want to do this. Because so far, we have been committed to serving this University in the best possible way. We have tried to do things right and to do the right things in the last five years. We have tried to change the narrative in terms of the behaviour of students, staff, and interpersonal relationships among staff.

There was a time all this was zero, and the University was unable to attract friends. But now, we have opened up the University to the outside world to say we are here.

Another online newspaper also published a report recently alleging that Michael Okpara University planned to splash 252 million naira on three vehicles for the Pro-Chancellor and two others, querying why you want to buy the vehicles as your tenure nears termination.

Very interesting question. Let me take it from where you asked why I’m interested in spending money before I leave office. The issue of spending money is not a day’s business. It’s a business that has to do with appropriation, and no appropriation comes overnight.

Let me correct the impression that the amount of money the online publication referred to has anything to do with 2026. In fact, we have a higher amount for 2025 than that, but as at today, we have not seen our budget for 2026.

Normally, government gives you what is known as an envelope. When you open the envelope, you match the content with the needs of the University. I’m sure that if you mentioned 252 million naira or so, that should even belong to the 2025 appropriation. That is the last appropriation which has not even been expended.

Let me also say quickly that we have not received our 2024 appropriation. The 2025 appropriation, for instance, was articulated in 2024, and whatever price was available then was used to determine what a vehicle should cost. When we finish that, we normally present our articulation to government through the Joint Committee on Appropriation of the Ministry of Agriculture, which is where we draw our capital expenditure from.

For 2025, which is where the 252 million naira or thereabouts that was published was captured, it required us going to the Tenders Board to get approval to spend that money. Of course, before it even gets to that level, between the envelope and the Joint Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture, we go through our procurement processes in the University. First, we go through what we call the University Procurement Planning Committee (UPPC), which decides what the cost of the vehicles should be.

The UPPC meets when contractors submit their quotations, and then after that, it gets to the University Tenders Board (UTB), which agrees with the Planning Committee on what the cost should be.

Now, when you get to the Tenders Board and there is a cost that could be awarded in the University, it will be awarded. But if it cannot be awarded in the University, it will go to the Ministerial Tenders Board.

So, it is not a question of getting up to spend money. Not at all. There are levels of checks, balances, and approvals before you can spend government funds. It’s not a one-man show. It’s not about what the VC wants. It is appropriate.

I therefore see such a publication as a way of trying to smear an administration because it shows that the author does not understand the process of procurement. Procurement is not a day affair. It’s not a one-person affair. It involves many people, and there are checks and balances. I think that’s what I would like to say about that.

But was there actually a plan to buy those vehicles, and was it captured in the budget?

Yes, for 2025, not 2026, and that budget was prepared in 2024.

So the decision to buy the vehicles close to your exit was not sudden?

Correct. Because the plan went through relevant authorities, committees, and processes. The University has to spend the money for which it was approved whenever it is released. But it has not been released. The 2024 appropriation has not been released. 2025 has not been released. We can only spend when what is budgeted and approved is released.

So the 252 million naira being talked about has not even been released?

Yes, it has not been released.

The 32 acts of Public Procurement Act violation by the university was also published by the online newspaper, adding that your University paid severance allowance in excess of 44 million naira to your predecessor.

I never paid such money. As a matter of fact, the issue of payment of severance allowance to former Vice-Chancellors is an act of the Governing Council. It is not any individual’s act. And it did not happen in my time. I didn’t pay anybody such money. I didn’t meet any outstanding severance allowance for my predecessor. Those payments must have been made before I came. That’s why I am telling you that the authors of those online reports were bringing things from here and there just to deceive the public into thinking it happened in my administration.

You might have also read that there were contracts your university awarded without evidence of execution, as well as uncompleted projects for which full payments were made.

If you know the history of this University, you will know the administration where abandoned projects featured prominently. So, the sponsors and authors of those stories intended to paint a picture of financial misappropriation against my administration and use it to incite the public.

What I do in such situations is go into my room, pray, and hand them over to God so that He will take care of them. When somebody is telling lies, do I start exchanging words with them? No, I do not have time to exchange words with liars because there is nothing to gain from it.

Most likely, you stepped on toes while administering at the University. How did you redress them as a man of God?

I have not stepped on any toes here. Because in these five years as a VC, I have been very conscious of myself, and I report back to God in Heaven every day. I have not stepped on any toes. I am very sure of that. Those who did what they wanted to do against our administration did it on their own.

Somebody got up here and said he was resigning and resigned, then wanted to come back, and we told the person what government policy is on that. I don’t think I stepped on the person’s toes. I did not ask the person to resign.

So, I have not had any quarrel with any person. What I have done in the past five years was to stitch a lot of torn clothes to make sure that everybody is happy.

There might have been things or decisions you made that you later regretted or would have done differently if you had to do them again?

I can’t remember. I have not taken any decision or actions unilaterally throughout my administration. My actions have been consistent with the law of the University. I respect the law. I implement the law. So, if I was guided in that way, I wonder what I should be regretting.

Less than two months to the end of your tenure, your successor has not been selected despite the advertisement for applications.

We are still within the period. We are supposed to produce my successor within six months, that is, between September 2025 and March 2026. So, we are still on it, but then it is entirely a Council matter. It’s not the Vice-Chancellor’s business.

Your cherished accomplishments as Vice-Chancellor and regrets in office, Sir.

I hold it would have been foolhardy to expect that, having put the right foot first, all my colleagues would have followed immediately, but that was not the case. We were still in a situation where not everybody was following.

But thank God the majority understood where we were going and followed us. The worst moment should have been on 6 February 2024, when we were trying to fix the University in a way that made it easy for us to run things, especially among students. But we were misunderstood, and students were mobilised and went on a rampage. That should have been our worst moment.

As for my achievements, I had a vision to mobilise the University to positive thinking, positive action, productivity, and progressive programmes. I think we achieved it. The second is that we expanded the University in terms of infrastructure and location. People don’t understand what it means to start a new campus entirely, as we did at the Permanent Site in Olori, and we are still developing it.

We were able to capture our students through a biometric process and have developed a database from which we can give up-to-date information within 24 hours.

Again, we have completely digitalised our Bursary Department. This makes our accounting and financial transactions smooth and free from much human interference. In the Audit Report that the online newspaper published, most of the so-called infractions were cases of displacement or misplacement of records by staff.

It’s not that the records were not there; they were displacing records. At the time the auditors came, the records were not readily provided. So, there is nothing like embezzlement of money here. Now, due to what we have done in the Bursary, we can easily send our report straight to the Auditor-General or Accountant-General’s Office. That is part of our achievement.

We have done a similar thing with the University Library. We started the digitalisation of our operations with Senate meetings within three months of my assumption of office. With e-Senate, we have saved a lot on paper.

Again, the issue of transcripts became a very big problem in this University because people were trading on it. People were doing all manner of things here, but today we have fixed everything about transcripts. It is also done online. So that’s our achievement.

The Federal Government has done something very good in Umudike, even though we are not yet talking about it loudly, and that is the completion of the Energising Education Project (EEP) that built our solar plant. We now have 24-hour power supply in Umudike. It wasn’t like that three years ago.

We have tried to reorient the University and make sure that none of our programmes are lost; rather, we have gained more.

In the last admission, we gained more than 1,500 students for the University, which was not the case before. We have included and introduced new courses, very crucial ones like Food Engineering, Embedded Artificial Intelligence, Mechatronics, etc., which will be verified this month. We have also equipped our laboratories and spent money on equipping them.

The Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria (COREN) visited us about two months ago for accreditation and sent me a gratifying report that some of the equipment we have in Umudike is not available in any other University in Nigeria.

For example, we have the amino acid analyser and several other pieces of equipment which are not found anywhere else in the Southeast.

After serving your tenure on 28 February 2026, what is your next call of duty?

I gave my life to the service of the University and am proud of the progress we have made. I shall first take some rest. (Guardian)