Rector Sues Journalist over Malicious Publication in Nasarawa State

 

The Rector, Isa Mustapha Agwai Polytechnic ( IMAP) Lafia, Nasarawa State, Dr. Justina Kotso, has threatened to sue a Nasarawa journalist with a hundred million naira (100,000,000) charge over malicious publication.

 

This was contained in a letter issued by her council, M. I. DIKKO & ASSOCIATES to the Nasarawa state correspondent of Universal Reporters, Rabiu Omaku, and obtained by journalists in Lafia, the state capital.

 

In a publication titled, “Rector IMAPOLY Formerly Nasarawa State Polytechnic in the Eyes of the Storm as Allowance of SIWES Student Disappeared Into Thin Air”, the rector was accused of embezzling funds meant for students on industrial attachment.

 

“Members of the Governing Council, are irked over what stopped the implementation of the 2022 report of the Department of Business Administration and Management, an untold story of the Isa Mustapha Polytechnic, Lafia, which is gradually a Cesspool of fake students and certificates and many more allegations leveled against her.

 

“The Polytechnic, which was popularly and formerly known as Polytechnic, Lafia is a cesspool of corruption, meaning a

the tsunami that ended the corrupt administration of the Rector Bursar and Registrar who were dismissed by the then Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura’s reign”; part of the publication reads.

But reacting to the development, the rector said her lawyers had since written a letter to the author seeking a retraction of the publication.

According to the letter, “Members of the Governing Council, are irked over what really stopped the implementation of the 2022 report of the Department of Business Administration and Management, an untold story of the Isa Mustapha Polytechnic, Lafia, which is gradually a Cesspool of fake students and certificates and many more allegations leveled against her

 

“Our client further informed us that the said defamatory article was published on the web address of Universal Reporters which has been viewed by over 70 persons as of 19” September 2023 and shared across other social media platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and widely circulated within the Polytechnic community, Nasarawa State and Nigeria as a whole as her phone lines have been inured with calls from family members, professional colleagues, friends and well-wishers who have read the publication seeking to know why our client is associated with such criminal acts. 

 

“Your defamatory article which has been widely read within the polytechnic community and beyond has lowered the self-esteem and integrity of our client, as our client is a Rector of repute. Your article has now portrayed our client as a fraudster, a person of low integrity, an unreliable woman, a cheat, and someone who is not interested in the well-being and development of students especially those of Isa Mustapha Agwai Polytechnic, Nasarawa State. 

 

“We wish to state without mincing words that our client is an administrator and academic per excellence who has benefitted immensely from the education sector of the country and has no intention whatsoever of sabotaging the system which she has carved a niche for herself and has gained for herself national and international recognition. 

It is premised on the above set of facts that we have our client’s mandate to write to you and demand the following: 

 

“That you delete the defamatory article that you published on the Universal Reporter Website forthwith. 

That you immediately publish a retraction and apology to our client on the website of Universal Reporters”, the letter reads in part.

 

Dominica Nwabufo