The High Court in Winneba has found the Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba, Professor Mawutor Avoke, and the school’s Finance Officer, Frank Owusu Boateng, guilty of procurement and other financial irregularities.
The court subsequently ordered the retrieval of all monies paid to the contractors that worked on the North Campus roads and a forensic audit of the project.
It also awarded GHc 8,000 in damages against the University.
The university was dragged to court by one Supi kofi Kwayera who said the Vice Chancellor and the Finance Officer were operating under the institution’s defunct Governing Council.
The mandate of the Council was to have expired in November 2013, but the Education Ministry failed to constitute a new Governing Council for the university, and rather allowed and permitted the defunct Governing Council which had no mandate whatsoever to continue the functions of a properly constituted Governing Council as if same had been properly constituted.
He had also raised various allegations against the management, including procurement and financial irregularities.
In July, the Vice Chancellor was asked to step aside by the court. The directive led to a pandemonium at the university, climaxed by a strike by the school’s branch of the University Teachers Association of Ghana.
The Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) later stepped in to the allegation of financial and procurement irregularities made against the Vice Chancellor and five officers of the University.
The University’s Governing Council also formed a three-member fact finding committee on September 5, 2017. Its mandate was to establish the facts to aid the University in its defence in the court case.
Prof. Mawutor Avoke was probed alongside Dr Theophilus Senyo Ackorlie, Finance Officer; Ms Sena Dake Internal Auditor; Ms Mary Dzimey, Acting Head of Procurement and Daniel Tetteh, Ag. Deputy Director of Works and Physical Development, and Finance Officer Frank Owusu Boateng.
Source: 3news.com