By Audrey Richards
Academic Integrity Watch
Typically, if one has an axe to grind with someone who has been elevated to a position of power and authority, it is, at the very least, customary, if not rational, to wait a while for the individual to take up the position and begin to enact policies of administration or governance.
Based on such policies, the person’s opponents can then begin their second-guessing and fault-finding. In the case of Sonny Echono, who is a former Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education recently appointed as the new Executive Secretary of TETFUND, he has been accorded no such grace period, after all, he was just appointed to the position of Executive Secretary of TETFund in March 2022, barely three months ago!
Why are his traducers not giving him a grace period or benefit of doubt?
The reason seems clear enough: It appears Mr. Echono has come to his job at TETFUND determined to clean house, an administrative objective designed to ferret out most, if not all the skeletons in TETFUND’s closet; and that has many people quaking at the knees! So, a calculated smear-campaign, as well as a witch-hunt, has been set in motion, in an effort to derail Echono’s expressed goal of cleaning house.
One of the house-cleaning goals Mr. Echono set for himself, and which is likely one of the reasons behind the smear-campaign by his detractors, is his determination to find out and hold responsible, contractors who were paid in part, or in full, for projects that have not been completed or were never executed for the past fifteen years, even if it means they will have to be prosecuted in a court of law!
Another concern the Executive Secretary of TETFund, Mr. Echono, has set his sights on is probing, stopping, and possibly, prosecuting the corrupt practice of people in tertiary institutions being awarded overseas training funds, but failing to go on the foreign training programmes, yet keeping the funds they were awarded by TETFund for the overseas training.
Mr. Sonny Echono comes to his position at TETFund with a sterling administrative track record: Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education—his last post before retiring and being appointed Executive Secretary of TETFund; Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Communication; one of the appointments of President Buhari, which can be said to be solely based on merit.
What is especially sad and regrettable is that the journalistic organ that headlined the bogus allegations against Mr. Sonny Echono, Sahara Reporters, a normally reasonable, even if a sensational tabloid; failed completely to undertake proper investigative journalism in order to determine if any or all of the allegations levelled against Mr. Echono were worthy of their ink or paper, not to speak of its reputation.
Mr. Echono may well be within his rights to sue Sahara Reporters for defamation. But other news outlets should take their cue from this, on how NOT to do this kind of reporting! Let us hope that this was an isolated journalistic error in judgement on Sahara Reporter’s part, rather than a deeper problem of complicity.