- Management insists victims re-pay fees, denies affected students of results
The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related offence Commission in Osun State has arrested a private cyber cafe operator in Osogbo, simply identified as Olasunkanmi Mutiu, for allegedly swindling students of the National Teachers’ Institute in the state to the tune of about N20 million, being funds allegedly meant for their school fees.
Mutiu was said to have been nabbed on the verge of leaving Nigeria.
The Point gathered that the suspect was picked up alongside his luggage on his way to an airport recently.
The management of NTI Kaduna has been at loggerheads with some students at its Study Centres in Osun State after the cyber cafe operator duped the school.
Mutiu, was accused of swindling the students of the NTI centres in Osun to the tune of about N20 million, being funds allegedly meant for their school fees.
The affected students at the Degree, National Certificate Education and Post Graduate Diploma in Education centres of the state, it was gathered, had been visiting Mutiu, the owner of Olasmooth Cafe, Alekuwodo, Osogbo, for the online payment of their school fees and subsequent generation of their payment receipts known as Remita Retrieval Reference (RRR) since 2018.
At the cyber cafe, the students said they would give Mutiu their school fees to pay to the account of NTI and then generate RRR for them.
According to the victims, most of whom are elderly and young practicing teachers, they trusted Mutiu because he was a friend to the immediate past Osun State Coordinator, Dr. Edun Francis.
They also said he was usually seen with some national supervisors whenever they visited their centres. Trouble started for the over 420 affected students after about four years when the management discovered that the RRR they submitted were allegedly cloned by the cyber cafe operator and that the school fees they had reportedly paid were not found in the bank account.
NTI Kaduna was said to have sent a team of investigators to Osun in 2022 to probe the alleged scam. After a meeting between the panel and leadership of the affected students, one of the centre managers, in a message made available to The Point, informed the students that the NTI had taken up the case with the cyber cafe and that it would resolve it.
The message reads, “Please tell everybody to avoid being duped. At the end of the interaction today, the panel said NTI had officially taken up the case with the cyber cafe.
They, on behalf of NTI, apologized to all the affected students for the embarrassment; that the issue would not at all affect students’ results and issuance of their certificates. Above is the only information officially from me, the centre manager. Everyone should be careful of being duped again.”
Consequently, the affected students had paid for the second semester examination slated to start in February, last year and had been preparing.
But, the students were thrown into confusion after the management reportedly recanted and directed the students to pay their swindled outstanding school fees before they would be allowed to write the examination. The affected students who had graduated were also asked to pay their backlog before their statements of result would be released to them.
A memo addressed to Dr R. O. Bolarinwa, Centre Manager, Osogbo High School, Osogbo, by NTI headquarters in Kaduna, titled, “Recovery of Cloned RRR Payment from Students From Your Centre”, a copy of which was obtained by The Point, reads, “Arising from the report of investigation on cloned RRR carried out on the students from your study centre to NTI management at the headquarters, the Director and Chief Executive has directed that all revenue in respect of fake cloned RRR in your centre must be recovered from the affected students before Thursday 26th January, 2023, before the commencement date of the 2nd semester examination.
“All the current students who are affected will not be allowed to write the exams if they fail to recover the genuine RRR payment of their indebtedness in line with the management’s no fees, no examination policy. All graduated students affected will have no access to their results if they defy the stated date.”
The development caused tension in the centres as students protested the policy and appealed to the management to allow them write the current examination, then look for a way to pay the backlog gradually. They said the cyber cafe operator had been arrested by the Police about three times but nothing concrete came out of it because the NTI management did not intervene.
A former coordinator of the Osogbo Study Centre, who spoke with our correspondent on the condition of anonymity, alleged that Mutiu was often seen with the former State Coordinator, Edun Francis, and some other officials and it was through them that the students started going to the cafe operator for the transactions.
“What we came to realise was that he had been a friend of the immediate past Osun State Coordinator of NTI, Dr Edun Francis. He was transferred in 2022. Because the cafe man is used to the centre, the management asked students to go and meet the man to generate their RRR,” he stated.
Expressing disbelief at how Mutiu was able to outsmart the institute for so long,” he said, “The students had generated RRR and had presented them to the management. I don’t know how he came to swindle people overnight, maybe because he had known the institute at the state level. We feel that it is not only him that is involved in this. He has been arrested on three or four occasions but they keep on bailing him. The total money involved in this scam is about N20 million.
“It baffles us that the management is just discovering this after these years.”
Meanwhile, the ICPC has assured that diligent investigation would be done and that findings would be made public.
In an interview with The Point, Osun ICPC Commissioner, Demola Bakare, confirmed that Mutiu was arrested but revealed that he had been released on bail.
“Investigation is ongoing and that is the only thing I can tell you for now. He was arrested and released on bail. But, he has been reporting to the office. In a couple of weeks, two to three weeks, we will round-off and give our findings,” Bakare promised.
Some of the affected students said the commission had invited them for interrogation and appealed that the matter should not be swept under the carpet.
It was gathered that NTI management had refused to release results to affected students, while insisting that the duped funds would be re-paid by the victims.
