Exclusive: Financial Scam Rocks Ebonyi State Students Foreign Scholarship Scheme

When the University of Greater Manchester announced a month ago that it was suspending three senior staff members, the national media focused on one name: George Holmes, who has been Vice Chancellor since 2005. 

The suspension of Holmes and two of his colleagues followed reporting by The Mill which uncovered evidence of financial corruption at the university and prompted an independent audit by the consultancy PwC. 

Within hours of the announcement, the police confirmed they had opened an investigation. The university insists that the suspensions do not indicate that the staff have done anything wrong.

The other suspended staff member named by The Mill was Zubair Hanslot, the university’s provost, who insists he has no idea why he has been suspended and denies any wrongdoing. Hanslot, like Holmes, has worked for the university for decades.

The third staff member, who has been suspended: a 44-year-old Nigerian senior lecturer in healthcare management called Gideon Okorie, who only started working for the university in May last year, having previously studied an MBA there. Okorie’s suspension suggests the university’s growing scandal is wider than we have previously reported and may encompass a much-heralded partnership with a small state in the south of Nigeria. 

On Friday, we passed the claims in this story to the police, who told us: “The GMP investigation remains active and is focused on gathering evidence relating to allegations reported to us by the Mill”.

 The Ebonyi students

Unlike Holmes and Hanslot, Okorie is not a senior figure at the university. But his significance seems to be that he was involved in organising a major partnership between the university and the Ebonyi State in southeast Nigeria, which sent 128 graduate students to the university for the current academic year.

Ebonyi’s population of around three million makes it one of the smallest of Nigeria’s 36 states, but each year since 1998 the Ebonyi State Scholarship Board has paid for some of the state’s brightest students to pursue graduate degrees in Nigeria and overseas. In October 2024 the Governor of Ebonyi announced the names of more than 750 scholarship winners for that year. 212 of them would be going to universities in the UK, including Anglia Ruskin and the University of Greater Manchester.

 Welcoming its nearly 130 Ebonyi students in February, the University of Greater Manchester announced it had “secured 65 per cent of the Ebonyi scholarships awarded this year.”

Okorie’s profile page on the university website says that he “facilitated” the partnership and “secured” the placements for the students. But The Mill has learned that the partnership also involved paying an external education consultant called Anyata Emmanuel Ajah, whose company is said to have helped with the screening of applicants. Our attempts to reach Ajah for comment were not successful.

Ajah’s precise responsibilities are unclear, but public records in Nigeria show that in September last year (that is, just before the announcement of the current Ebonyi scholarship awards) someone set up a company using what appears to be Ajah’s email address. The company’s name is Vigica Consult Limited, and it is registered in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria.

Eight days after the Nigerian company was registered, a separate company with the same name was incorporated in the UK. Companies House shows that on 20 September 2024, Vigica Consult Limited was set up with a registered address in Farnworth, Bolton.

 The company’s sole director is Dr Gideon Sorochi Okorie, described in the filings as a Nigerian lecturer, the man recently suspended by the University of Greater Manchester. 

 Two Vigicas

When The Mill visited Okorie’s address in Farnworth, Okorie answered the door but said he couldn’t speak to us. When we reached him on the phone, he said he didn’t know why he had been suspended and that he hadn’t been approached by the police. 

He did, however, confirm that Anyata Emmanuel Ajah had been retained as a consultant for the arrangement between the University of Greater Manchester and the Ebonyi scholarship board.

When we asked Okorie in writing why he had started Vigica Consult Ltd and why Ajah appears to have created an identically named company in Nigeria in the same month, Okorie reiterated he couldn’t speak to a journalist.

Like Okorie, Hanslot – the university’s longstanding provost – maintains that the university’s board has not given him a reason for his suspension.

 When we visited Hanslot at his home on the edge of Bolton this week, he said he wasn’t allowed to speak to journalists.

 A university spokesperson told us Friday: “As there is currently an internal University process and external criminal investigation under way, we are unable to comment or provide any further information at this time”.

When we asked whether he had ever heard of Vigica or knew what its role was in the Ebonyi partnership, Hanslot told us: “I have no idea.”

Hanslot is considered a central figure in the university’s aggressive expansion into international student markets, and was involved in the Ebonyi partnership. But he insists he has done nothing wrong. “I’m not crooked,” he told us, saying “Justice has to be served”.

There is no suggestion that the students from Ebonyi State have done anything wrong. They are said to be excellent students, and when The Mill spoke to a few of them this week, they said they were enjoying their studies.

“Some of the assignments they give us, they make you think critically, they don’t just give you the answers,” says Okoro Otuu, a MSc engineering student. “They help you grow. Overall my five months here have been really rewarding.”

 Gideon Idenyi, a business data analytics student, says he feels confident in the university, but also describes some of the difficulties of settling in: “You are here with new people trying to merge into a new life and the situation is quite different from what we are used to in Nigeria. English food oh my god, I don’t want to talk about that.”

Henry Okorie, who studies a MSc in engineering management, echoes his thoughts. “Coming to Bolton felt like a risk initially. But it turned out to be one of the best decisions ever,” he says, remembering feeling sceptical when the Ebonyi scholarship board announced some engineering students would be placed in Bolton.

 “The university are supportive, they look out for students, they just want the best for students.” 

But one of the Nigerian education officials associated with the Ebonyi partnership faces questions. In February this year, the University of Greater Manchester published a press release celebrating the arrival of the Ebonyi students, with photos showing them visiting the new School of Medicine.

The press release quoted Gideon Okorie saying: “I am delighted to have helped secure this project which is more than two thirds of this year’s allocation from Ebonyi State, thanks to our strong reputation for practice-immersed learning and teaching excellence, coupled with student satisfaction.”

The release identified top Nigerian officials who accompanied the students, including a professor called Omari Chukwu Omaka, who is described as Ebonyi’s “Hon Commissioner for Tertiary Education”. 

In April Nigerian press reports identified Omaka as one of six Ebonyi government commissioners who the governor ordered to be arrested in what was described as the “largest single-day detention of state-level officials since Ebonyi was carved out of the old Enugu State in 1996.”

The reports – which The Mill has not yet been able to confirm – suggest that Omaka and the other officials were arrested on suspicion of corruption relating to a local property development project. Our emails to the Ebonyi state government weren’t returned. 

SOURCE: THE MILL Newspaper