Former BOT Chairman writes The President of UNIOSUN Alumni
In an open letter that has been reproduced below the former Board Chairman of the Osun State University Alumni Association, Mr. David Oladeji has written the President of the association this is sequel to a letter that was written earlier by him to the President and was made available to the public after allegedly no response from the President. The previous letter is availabe here.
An Open Letter To Mr. Oriola Oladipupo Abdulkabir, The President, NEC, Osun State University Alumni Association.
I, the above named alumnus, of this noble, famous and revered association hereby write for myself and on behalf of thousands of current members of the association and millions to come succinctly as follows:
1. That I am a financial member of the aforementioned association which for the purpose of this writing will be referred to as ‘OSSUA’.
2. That I am the immediate past Chairman of OSSUA’s Board of Trustee equally known as the BoT, a position which has placed my humble self in the realm, status and position of a Stakeholder of the Association.
3. That as a matter of fact and for the avoidance of doubt, every financial member of OSSUA is by the fulfilment of that onerous duty, responsibility and obligation a Stakeholder in the OSUAA affairs.
4. That I am a founding member of the Association with a team of passionate and dedicated minds who contributed not only in efforts and finances but risked their all and gave all it takes to bring the Association to the current level it is which you, as the president is enjoying and wish to continually enjoy.
5. While I was the BoT Chair of OSUAA, my administration gave the Association a lift and a face by giving it a life it deserves at the Corporate Affairs Commission when it was registered under Part C of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, 2004 as an Incorporated Trustee. A move which gave OSUAA the audacity, nerve and ability to exist as a corporate personality capable of suing and being sued in its personal corporate personality, it also gave the association the features of perpetual succession which I hope it will continue to enjoy as much as it has responsible and responsive personnel who are its hands and legs in charge of affairs.
6. That it is no gainsaying to state and hold that for an association to thrive, it needs financial backing and back up to work and run efficiently, hence I in company of my team opened a corporate account with the First Bank of Nigeria, Aregbe Branch, Osogbo, Osun State after fulfilling all the requirements which includes but not limited to providing a working constitution for the running and/or operations of the association account.
7. That the Constitution of our dear Association particularly Article 13 D-G which deals with account specifically in clear, unambiguous and express terms provided for the signatories to the OSSUA’s Account and went a step further to make provisions for a ‘Mandatory Signatory’ who must be the Treasurer of NEC of the Association with one other person either the President or the General Secretary. To further buttress this, the Treasurer and President can sign for withdrawal, the Treasurer and General Secretary can sign for withdrawal BUT withdrawal made by both the President and General Secretary cannot hold water as it is void from its foundation — an affront to the spirit and dictate of our guiding constitution.
8. That during the tenure of Aboderin Ademuyiwa Aduragbemi as the President of OSSUA’S NEC, the Constitution was not only abused but disregarded and its provisions generally ignored as so many frauds were committed as withdrawals were made without recourse to the Constitutional requirements. For instance, in the early reign of the “Pariah President”, several withdrawals were made by the President and the General Secretary without the knowledge of the most important person as far and as long as the constitution is concerned — the Treasurer.
9. During Aduragbemi’s reign, the Association witnessed a huge setback and disrepute with a series of fraud, unconstitutionalism, dictatorship, imposition, nepotism and unimaginable corruption. For the records; Aduragbemi inaugurated his own “BoT”, made withdrawals running into Millions of Naira without any recourse to NEC, introduced an “Account Manager” to make personal withdrawal for him from the association’s account and gave a “Miragic’’ scholarship to non-existent “Students of UNIOSUN without the consent of the BoT and/or ratification of the General Assembly.
10. That in general, Aduragbemi ran OSSUA as his personal company and indeed brought the Association to a huge disrepute. These activities and actions of his generated huge controversies even from his cabinet as most of the NEC members resigned and made petitions to the BoT.
11. That these petitions and several obvious and conspicuous complaints led the BoT under my leadership to freeze the Association’s Account with First Bank of Nigeria Limited wherein it was difficult for money to be withdrawn from the said account.
12. That upon the discovery of these many frauds, my team with the mandate of the OSSUA’S Stakeholders decided to initiate both Civil and Criminal proceedings against the President, who was hungry and thirsty to ruin the Association in its entirety, by creating a life BoT and changing the entire constitution in a caricature AGM where his loyalists would vote out the existing Board of Trustees and National Executive Council of the Association and elect “Brand New’’ BoT and NEC members. He succeeded partly by replacing his coordinates who were elected with him in a quorumless General Assembly.
13. That this necessitated the BoT under my leadership to approach a Legal Practitioner to among other things put up an official petition to the fraudulent activities in the Association as perpetrated by Aduragbemi and upon the approval of the said petition, during the interview with Commissioner of Police, it was resolved and the Commissioner of Police at the Nigeria Police Force, Osun State Command ordered that Aduragbemi be charged to the court on criminal charge to answer to all the allegations as contained in the said petition which he (Adura) could not give a satisfactory response to.
14. That even though the directive was issued; the former NEC President manipulated his way as usual and illegally prevailed on the men of the State Information Bureau of Osun State Command and the CP’s directive never materialised as the same only exists in words.
15. Mr. President, may I reiterate here that during the Tenure of your Predecessor; audit on the Association was never carried out and series of noticeable, visible and conspicuous corruption, financial misappropriation, high handedness and unconstitutional activities were the theme of the Administration preceding your tenure.
16. That up till the time of writing this letter; there is a pending civil suit in HOS/67/2019 filed against Aduragbemi Ademuyiwa Abodunrin to seek redress against the series of multifarious corruptions against Adura’s tactics and antics while in office of OSSUA’s NEC as a Pariah Leader.
17. Mr. President, your good self would recall that under your leadership as Social Director of this Noble Association between 2016 and 2018 under the watch of Bibitayo Owolabi the founder and progenitor of None Accountability as long and as far as this Noble Association is concerned, you took a whooping sum of about One Million, Two Hundred Thousand Naira Only (N1, 200,000.00) from the association without the consent, permission and sanction of the BoT and/or the General Assembly which till this present moment remains unaccounted for, unaudited and no record has been set straight to ratify your action in connivance with the erstwhile president, Bibitayo Owolabi.
18. Since your emergence as the President of this noble Association, even though there were high expectations that you would learn from your shortcoming of unaccountability, your tenure and leadership style so far is proving and heading to a catastrophic end which I fear may lead to a more fatal disruptive end far worse than that of Bibitayo Owolabi and Aduragbemi A. Aboderin as you have imbibed the corrupt practices, high handedness, recidivism nature of your predecessors.
19. In proving the above; you have refused, ignored and neglected despite repeated demand by stakeholders of this association to be accountable and make available the audits of the association’s account without any reasonable and/or justifiable reason.
20. Further to prove that you are moving in the steps and shadows of some of the lawless and unconstitutional activities of your predecessors, you have failed to make publicly available the budgets and accounts of spending of your administration for the previous year (2021/2022 Financial year) and only presented a simplistic unaudited document as accounts to an AGM that was intentionally poorly advertised and haphazardly put together leading to a quorumless outing for an association with more than 10,000 members, this is a shame. For avoidance of doubt our constitution requires the attendance of fifty (50) financial members at such a meeting to form a quorum. I am aware that actions on the verge of criminalities such as manipulating and forgery with regards to the attendance of that meeting of the 4th of June 2022, which I was in attendance, may be in the pipeline, I am sure that you as well as other concerned stakeholders will do all within your power to prevent such, as any such action will be met with vehement resistance as provided for by the law, as there is video and pictorial evidence of attendance of the meeting. A more publicised emergency congress is not out of place to rectify what needs rectification and attention. We cannot continually allow unconstitutional actions and acts of criminality be the order of the day in our dear association.
21. The quoted suit which was initiated to help the Association set a standard and tame the monstrous beast of corruption eating deep into the association’s leadership has been hugely neglected by your administration as you have feigned and consciously made yourself deliberately disinterested in order to bring the suit into its early grave as you are of the reasonable view that judgement in the suit in favour of the association against Aduragbemi will set a permanent precedent and check on corrupt practices in the Association, and this will be fatal to your leadership style which is themed, couched and imbedded with the semblance leadership style of your predecessors.
22. As OSSUA’s NEC President, you are aware and must remember that duty comes before self, but you have deliberately placed yourself above the Association and you have on several occasions run the association as an undergraduate association similar to a departmental association as you have watered down the power, authority and weight of OSSUA by making it, placing it and/or holding it out as an appendage of power or subservient to the UNIOSUN’s Management as the Association is not assertive, firm and independent as it should be as all the activities expected of a Sovereign body are strictly dependent on the School’s Management whip and caprices, even though the University management has made bold efforts to raise the association to the standards it should be, your body language and activities have rather belittled and debased the status of the association. Your engagements with the School Management over the course of more than 70% of your tenure has not resulted in tangible headway as regards monies lodged with the School Management since the year 2011, as collection of membership fees from graduates of the University on behalf of the association. if any such progress has been made this has been lost, for lack of communication and transparency on your part.
23. Mr. President, you have, since emerging as the association’s President, run, controlled and treated OSSUA as your personal company, business and corporation as you have brow-beaten, shut the General assembly, Board of Trustees and even some members of your NEC out of OSSUA’s affair and you have chosen, made up your mind and decided to run the Association in a Sole proprietorship style by constantly taking unilateral decisions without recourse to the BoT particularly in the areas of Finance, Funds, Expenditure and Spending. If one were to look for information on the activities of our dear association on your personal Facebook page, one would not skip too many posts to see you in poses with notable figures and personalities that the office of the President gives you access to. However, there is no officially updated social media or website with such up-to-date information (except for closed, unpublicised groups on whatsapp not reaching up to 10% of members of the association) such as operated and created by you or any of your NEC members to allow members to be in the know of the activities of the association. I must remind you that service to the association and members of the association should be more important than political gymnastics as you were elected to SERVE the people and not your political profile.
24. I write to call you to order and demand as a stakeholder and member of the association to audit the Association’s Account, do a comprehensive report of your stewardship and records of office with immediacy forthwith.
25. As I have written to you previously, about the scholarships awarded to “indigent” students by your administration, I am calling on you to explain how the indigent students were selected and if approval for such was obtained expressly from the BOT as no budget has been presented nor approved as I am aware for this year within which the scholarships were awarded.
26. A number of stakeholders and members of the larger Osun State University community are watching and hoping that we grow and are accountable such that they will be interested in giving back to the community through the association as a arm of the University that can be trusted to administer itself and funds without fear of misappropriation or mismanagement. As a stakeholder willing to make such contributions in my own way as I have earlier communicated to you Mr. President, this is one of my biggest fears.
27. On a concluding note; I call on you not just for your name, self and personality but for the progress, goodwill and growth of the association and for posterity sake; to do the needful and remember the oath guiding the office you hold and occupy as the President of NEC on behalf of thousands of alumni of OSSUA and several millions of Alumni of OSSUA to come in subsequent years.
