The man designated the next vice chancellor of the University of Uyo, a federal government-owned institution, Prof. Enefiok Essien was indicted in 2005 for forgery and sexual assault by the Court of Appeal, court papers obtained exclusively by PREMIUM TIMES have revealed.
Mr. Essien, a 55-year old professor of commercial law and the current dean, faculty of law, Uniuyo, has been tapped to succeed Prof. Comfort Ekpo as the next vice chancellor of the university on December 1, 2015.
The Court of Appeal, Calabar, Cross River State, handed down the indictment on Mr. Essien on July 14, 2005 while affirming the judgment of the Federal High Court, Calabar, which nullified Uniuyo’s expulsion of a female student, Linda Onyebuchi Essell, from the university over her alleged involvement in examination malpractice.
Uniuyo didn’t appeal the judgment and Ms. Essell went on to complete her first degree in law and graduated from the university.
She was represented at the Court of Appeal proceedings by Obiora A. Obianwu, SAN.
Ms. Essell, as at the time she was accused of examination malpractice in March, 1995, was in her second year, while Mr. Essien was a senior lecturer then.
The fact of the case, according to court papers, is that Mr. Essell submitted unstamped and unsigned answer booklet during her examination in Constitutional Law (PUL 211), and for this reason the university accused her of having pre-knowledge of the examination questions and of bringing pre-written examination answers into the examination hall.
She was eventually expelled from the university, although she pleaded that she was innocent of the allegations.
“I did not even notice (that the answer script was unstamped and unsigned). I explained that I was thoroughly searched by the invigilators like any other student before I entered the examination hall and that I was served with the answer script in the examination hall. I did not go out of the hall throughout the duration of the examination,” Ms. Essell had told the court in her affidavit.
Ms. Essell’s legal victory at both the federal high court and the Court of Appeal was secured on the strength of her argument that she wasn’t given fair hearing by the two panels – Examination Malpractice Panel and the Senate Appeal Panel – set up by the school.
She supported her argument with an affidavit telling how Mr. Essien, the man who several years later would be appointed Uniuyo’s vice chancellor, manipulated the university system against her because she had refused to accede to his love overtures.
Interestingly, it was Mr. Essien, who invigilated Ms. Essell in the PUL 211examination. It was him who accused her of examination malpractice. It was also him who chaired the Examination Malpractice Panel that tried Ms. Estell.
The panel had two other lecturers – Goddy A. Umoh and G. S. Akpan – drawn from the faculty of law as its members.
But Mr. Akpan “dropped out without any explanation and no effort was made to replace him in the panel thereby reducing it to a two-man panel instead of three as originally established,” the court said. “This gives room to doubt the impartiality and independence of the panel as constituted.”
Mr. Umoh, besides being a member of the panel at the faculty of law level, was also a member of the Senate Appeal Panel which was an appellate panel that looked into the recommendations of the former.
The court held that that was a travesty of justice and a serious breach of the rule of natural justice.
But Mr. Umoh told PREMIUM TIMES that he never sat on the Senate Appeal Panel when Ms. Essell’s READ MORE
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