Secret Reporters No place to hide
Secret Reporters
With the international eye now on the activities of most Nigeria Universities after the #Sexforgrades investigative reports, most schools have taken adequate measures to put an end to such unprofessional acts by suspending or outrightly sacking lecturers involved in such while others like the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria prefer to pay lip service.
Information available to SecretReporters revealed that a certain foreign lecturer in the department of Nursing Science, Prof. Hayat I. Gomma who allegedly has been working in the department since 2011 without a license was recently caught in a high-level examination malpractice by inviting a male postgraduate nursing student to her residence in the university staff quarters to re-write his examination.
We learned that the Egyptian lecturer after she was appointed the departmental postgraduate coordinator as her first call in office proceeded to conduct a postgraduate coursework examination. On 25th September 2019, the second day of the examination, after the MSc students finished their Advanced Research Methodology examination, eyewitnesses disclosed that Hayat Gomma instead of taking all the examination materials including the answer scripts to her office took them to her residence after which she invited a male student to the same residence where he sat like a first-class citizen to rewrite the exam.
The college of medicine we further learned are doing everything humanly possible to cover up the scandal by the same lecturer who earlier this year cost the department its accreditation after she vehemently refused to get licensed by the Nursing and Midwifery Council of Nigeria despite several letters from the council following her controversial appointment as the Head of the Department.
It should also be recalled that on 27th of September 2019 in a publication by Daily Trust Newspaper, 15 staff members of the university were dismissed due to various offences dominated by exam malpractice and irregularities. It is yet to be known if the Egyptian Professor will get the same treatment after the Director of Public affairs Dr Isma’il Shehu stated in reaction to the dismissal that Ahmadu Bello University Zaria does not hesitate in taking action against erring staff and student.
Despite the sacking of the 15 lecturers last month by the institution, many Nigerians especially students of ABU Zaria still see the anti-malpractice crusade embarked by the university as a mere charade with many lecturers tagged to be untouchable walking freely while a few are used as scapegoats in the lip service crusade.
When contacted, the Student involved stated that during the examination no answer script was provided for him. This prompted the invigilator to call the professor, who then directed that he should come to her residence to write the exam. He obliged and quickly went over to write the exam which he did in less than 20 minutes as he picked to answer the section A of the question. There was no alibi though to confirm this as he further revealed that the invigilator left to attend to business while he wrote the exam.
SecretReporters also contacted Professor Hayat Gomma to get her side of the story. At first, she warmly responded to initial greetings but when asked about the incident by our reporter, she quickly lashed out at him stating that no such thing ever happened. In her words “publish what you want to publish.. it is not my business, I didn’t do anything” as she kept reiterating all through the phone conversation after dropping the first call that no such thing ever occurred even when confronted with the fact that the postgraduate student confirmed that he wrote the exam at her residence.
