UI faces legal threat over convocation prize, first-class graduate demands N100m

Detailed summary

UI faces a potential court battle over its convocation after a first-class psychology graduate accused it of denying him honours.

…Student claims 3.91 CGPA was overlooked in favour of a 3.72 candidate

The University of Ibadan (UI) is facing a potential court battle over its undergraduate convocation after a first-class psychology graduate accused the institution of denying him faculty honours and threatened a N100 million lawsuit.

Through his solicitors, the student has petitioned Peter Olapegba, the newly inaugurated vice-chancellor, through the university’s registrar, demanding corrections to the 2026 order of proceedings.

Besides, the concerned student is prepared to seek an interim injunction to stop the Faculty of the Social Sciences convocation if the university fails to act.

The petition states that the student graduated with a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 3.91 on a 4.00 scale across 172 credit units. However, his name did not appear among the faculty prize winners in the convocation booklet.

The published list instead names Adeoti Adebare of the Department of Political Science, who graduated with a CGPA of 3.72, as winner of all eight major faculty awards, scholarships and endowments.

The disputed prizes include the prestigious Faculty Prize for the Best Final Year Student, the Professor Eno Inanga Prize, the Dr. Liman Ciroma Prize (awarded strictly to the graduate with the highest CGPA in the Faculty), the Peter Ajose Alli Prize, the NUPEMCO Prize, the De-United Indomie Scholarship, the Gamaliel O. Onosode Scholarship Scheme for Excellence, and the Late Pa Joseph Adesokan Osuntogun Prize.

The student’s legal team argued that giving awards, which they described as “mathematically impossible and logically absurd,” meant handing over the top-ranked prize to a student with a lower CGPA, which, according to them, amounts to gross administrative negligence and constructive academic fraud.

“It is legally unsustainable to confer prizes created specifically for the student with the highest Cumulative Grade Point Average upon a student with a 3.72 CGPA, while completely ignoring Our…

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