When a Professor of Computer Science of the UNILAG cannot use a computer to download information from the internet, and yet he claims to be the first PhD in Computer Science in Black Africa, a fingerprint expert, and an expert witness, is this not a major problem. This is a Professorial Virus.
Professor of computer science floored at tribunal
By Femi Makinde, Akure
Published: Thursday, 1 May 2008
An expert witness of Governor Olusegun Agagu, who is a professor of computer science at the University of Lagos, could not download information from a website during cross-examination at the election petitions tribunal in Akure by the counsel to the Labour Party governorship candidate, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko.
The witness, Prof. Emmanuel Adegbeyeni, told the Justice Garba Nabaruma-led tribunal that he was the first doctorate degree holder in computer science in Black Africa.
The witness who also claimed to be a fingerprint expert, said that he scanned 350,320 ballot papers but could not analyse them because they were covered with dust and also they were not stored in an air conditioned room.
Mimiko’s counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN), provided the witness with a lap-top computer and asked him to download the information he made reference to in his report.
But the professor, after manipulating the computer for close to 30 minutes, did not succeed in the exercise.
The audience could not help laughing as the professor appeared to be inconsistent in the answers he provided to Olanipekun’s questions.
Olanipekun had tried to establish that the witness was not a professor but Adegbeyeni said that he was appointed a professor at the Lagos State University .
While being led in evidence by the respondent lawyer, Mr. Goke Fakunle (SAN), the witness told the tribunal that he joined the University of Lagos in 1971 as Lecturer II and left for the Federal Ministry of Transport and Aviation in 1979 and returned to UNILAG in 2003.
However, he said that he was appointed a professor in 2002 at LASU but later changed the date to 2001.
He said that he was lecturing computer science at the Department of Business Administration at UNILAG.
Adegbeyeni later agreed that he never worked at LASU. When asked the name of the name of the current Head of Department of Business Administration, he mentioned one Prof, Sola Fasola. But Olanipekun told him that the name of the current HOD was Prof. I.C. Achomba.
He also could not mention more than two names of lecturers at the department.
The professor, who later said that he was now a contract lecturer with UNILAG, said he was never appointed a reader (associates professor).
Its quite ironic though that a Professor is the one that is scanning ballot papers. I mean, does it take a Professor to scan ballot papers in Nigeria? can a Professor who cannot use a computer be counted upon to use a Scanner?
The next question to ask is not what knowledge can this Professor impart to his students, but what knowledge has the professor been imparting to his students in the past years.
n a i j a t e c h t a l k 