How Mal. Muhammad Madu Frustrated me and Four others…

By Mrs Rosemary Usman Jatau  

This is an interview with one of the former staff of FCE Potiskum Mrs Rosemary Usman Jatau. She explained to Mike Odeh James her ordeal with the Provost of FCE Potiskum.

She spoke on how Mal. Madu sat on the grant given to her by TETFUND; how instead  of N1m, he offered her N400,000; how he refused to sign their release papers till they refunded the grants given to them by TETFUND and more.

Can you briefly restate how Mohammed Madu as the provost stopped you and others from getting the allowances after he had accessed the money in your name?

I got admission to University of Maiduguri in the 2009/2010 Academic session and l was given sponsorship by TETFUND on 25/11/201, the then deputy provost Mal. Madu Muhammad advised me not to collect the money. When I asked him why, he said because my admission was Mphil not PhD.

But when I enquired from the University, the University officials made it clear to me that it has never happened. So, when I came back to the deputy provost, Mal Madu Muhammad, to give him the feedback of my enquiry from the University.

However, he still insisted that I should either get a different offer of admission that read PhD direct or I should wait until I got upgraded to PhD status.

But to my dismay, even after the upgrade, despite the fact I have furnished them with a progress report and a photocopy of a memorandum, which I collected from post graduate school Unimaid, yet I was denied the money.

We also learnt he offered you N400,000 instead of N1,050, 000. Please, tell us more about that.

In the year 2017 when I saw that I have gone far and have even done an internal defense for the PhD program, I decided to write to the management under the leadership of Mal. Madu Muhammad; you may refer to the letter I wrote dated 11-January, 2017.

After I wrote requesting for the payment; to my surprise again I was given an offer of #437,000 simply because I attached copies of my registration receipts I made with the University, for transparency.

So, they went and calculated where I was provoked by the last three words in the letter so I was prompted to write a complaint letter to the Minister of Education on16-March-2017.

You may refer to the two letters of 11-January, 2017 and that of 16-March-2017.


We learnt that you wrote a petition to relevant bodies and the provost hijacked them.

Yes. After I posted the three copies of the letter, I had a discussion with a colleague about the letter I wrote, unfortunately he went and also discussed with one of his friends and the person informed the college registrar.

The registrar called me to his office asking me if what he heard was true and I asked him to be patient because I am going to serve them with their copies. I just assumed that the letters were hijacked because, up till this moment nobody called me about it. 

I directed the letter to the former Minister of Education and copied the Executive Secretary of TETFUND and the Executive Secretary to Nigerian Commission for Colleges of Education.

Did the Provost finally allow you to access your fund after your studies?

Yes. That was when COEASU had some issues with the Provost (Mal Madu Muhammad) and the E.S. NCCE intervened and it happened I also copied COEASU my letter so my case was included in their submission.

The ES told him to pay, insisting the TETFUND attached to my name had been accessed already, therefore he should pay me. The Provost then paid me in two instalments.

We also learnt that Provost Madu refused to release you when you got employment with a Federal University. What were his reasons?

His reason was that I didn’t finish the bond on me. I told the chairman COEASU who was the go between, that the Provost should release us since TETFUND and my current place of appointment were both Federal institutions, we would pay from there but Madu refused. We also asked him to allow us to pay in instalments but he refused.

Again we begged him that since he owes us some allowances, we should do plus and minus and reconcile so we give him the balance, but he still refused our request.

He told the chairman COEASU to tell us that we should pay back the TETFUND first, and that whenever fund is available, we are going to be paid into our accounts. So, we had no option than to collect the account number he gave the chairman COEASU and make the payment just as you can see on the remita and the receipt.

How much did you pay into the account he gave you?

I paid the sum of N1,050,000 .00 via The college Bank account as you will see on the attachments.

Why must you pay the refund to the School account, is it not to TETFUND account you were supposed to pay?


Well, the Provost insisted that we pay to the School account and that was what we did.

How many of you were asked to pay back the TETFUND grants?

There were four of us: Myself and Dr. Zanna Kabiru have paid we are in the same University you can refer to the letters I posted to you yesterday, while Mal. Shehu Jatawa’s case was that he changed the University from ATBU Bauchi to Mautech Yola Adamawa State after about 2 or three years of studies.

So, he was denied the TETFUND intervention completely but he did complete the Masters program at Mautech.

The fourth person is Yahaya Abdullahi. His case is more complicated even the Emir of Fika intervened but all efforts made were abortive.

His own case is that he was being paid the TETFUND in both Masters and PhD programs, while he and Madu were in good terms somehow along the line they had their problems.

Yahaya wanted to transfer his service to Fed. Uni. of Kashere. So, he was made to refund the two TETFUNDs he enjoyed (Msc &PhD) otherwise he’ll not get a release letter; he refused to refund and he is still in FCE (T). Potiskum.