The Rivers State House of Assembly Ad-hoc Committee investigating the disbursement and utilisation of funds allocated to PAMO University of Medical Sciences (PUMS) has insisted that the university’s Vice-Chancellor must appear in person to answer questions on more than N28bn the institution reportedly received from the state government.

The Chairman of the committee and Deputy Speaker of the Assembly, Dumle Maol, said the appearance of the Vice-Chancellor was necessary because the committee needed the university’s chief accounting officer to speak directly to financial documents presented by the state Ministries of Finance and Education.

PAMO, a private medical university owned by former Governor Peter Odili, has enjoyed years of patronage from the state government, which sponsors medical students from Rivers on scholarship.

Maol, who spoke on the progress of the investigation, said PAMO failed to appear when other stakeholders, including the Accountant-General, Commissioner for Finance, Commissioner for Education and their Permanent Secretaries, honoured the committee’s invitation.

He said the committee subsequently directed the Vice-Chancellor to appear last Thursday and faulted claims by the university’s lawyer that it was not compulsory for the VC to appear in person.

According to him, the committee’s powers to summon the university’s chief accounting officer are backed by Section 129(A), (B) and (C) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.

“The only person that can come and speak to this document presented by the Ministry of Finance to this committee is the Chief Accounting Officer of the university, which is the Vice-Chancellor, and that is in line with the Constitution”, he said.

Maol dismissed claims circulating on social media that PAMO was not obligated to account to the committee, describing such assertions as unfounded.

“Section 129 A, B and C of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria empowers this committee to call any person to appear before us to give oral evidence and submit documents, and the said person must speak to those documents”, he said.

The committee chairman said records presented by the Ministry of Finance showed that funds were transferred from the Rivers State Consolidated Revenue Account to PAMO University, with the ministry’s records indicating payments exceeding N25bn.

He added that another document showed that PAMO received N1.163bn from the Ministry of Finance on March 13, 2026, for the 2025/2026 academic session.

Maol said the committee was particularly concerned because the payment appeared to have been made before PAMO wrote to the Ministry of Education requesting an increase in the allocation from N6bn to N8bn.

He stressed that the investigation was not aimed at denying Rivers students access to education but at determining how public funds appropriated for the scholarship programme were utilised.

He said: “We want Rivers people to know that over N28 billion taxpayers’ money is out there and we are trying to know how the funds were used, how many students benefited from the funds and whether they are Rivers students.”

The Deputy Speaker said discrepancies had also emerged between documents submitted by the Ministries of Finance and Education, which, he said, must be reconciled with records from PAMO.

He noted that while the Ministry of Education reported that the scholarship programme commenced in the 2017/2018 academic session with 100 students, the available disbursement record only showed a payment dated January 25, 2019.

“The question now is 2017 and 2018, what happened? Because we don’t have any record of disbursement for that year. These are the things we want PAMO’s Accountant-General and Finance to come and speak to us”, he said.

Maol also questioned the absence of the number of beneficiaries in some of the documents submitted to the committee, saying the records did not adequately establish how many Rivers indigenes had benefited from the scholarship scheme since its inception.

He said the committee needed PAMO to confirm the amounts it actually received from the state government and explain the purposes for which the funds were expended.

He said: “The Rivers State Ministries of Finance and Education are saying they had given PAMO the money. So it is only PAMO that will come and say, ‘We have not received’ or ‘We have received,’ and tell us exactly how much they have received and what they used the money for.”

The committee chairman said all the invitees would eventually appear before the panel to enable it reconcile the conflicting records and establish how the funds appropriated by the Assembly were utilised.

He maintained that the committee had a constitutional responsibility to conduct the inquiry, warning that invitees could be compelled to appear where they failed to honour its summons.

“If we invite you, you must come. And if you don’t come, the Constitution has given us the power to compel you to obey us here. We must compel you for legislative obedience”, he said. (The Nation)