COURT HEARS CASE AGAINST GIMPA RECTOR

THE Accra Fast Track High Court has begun hearing the case in which Mr Egbert Isaac Faibille Jnr is seeking an order to restrain Dr Stephen Adei from holding himself out as the Rector and professor of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).
Mr Faibille wants the court to order that Dr Adei is not a professor, either at GIMPA or any other institution, and should, therefore, be restrained from holding himself out as such.
He further wants the court to order GIMPA to advertise the position of Rector, since it was vacant because, according to him, when the tenure of office of Dr Adei expired on October 1, 2004, he had not been re-appointed as Rector.
Led in evidence by his counsel, Mr Faibille said it was a very big fraud being perpetuated on students and the people of Ghana if Dr Adei was allowed to use the title ‘professor’ and also allowed to be at post in such a public institution.
Mr Faibille, who is a lawyer and publisher of the Ghanaian Observer newspaper, has sued Dr Adei, the Governing Council of GIMPA and GIMPA as an entity.
According to him, Dr Adei was appointed by the then Court of Governors of GIMPA as Director-General of GIMPA on October 1, 1999 for a five-year term. However, after the expiration of his tenure in October 2004, Dr Adei was still at post.
He said when Dr Adei’s term of office expired, Dr Adei verbally told the GIMPA Governing Council to renew his appointment, after which he was appointed as the acting Rector from January 1, 2005.
The plaintiff said beyond that no letter or communication had been sent to Dr Adei confirming his appointment in the acting capacity.
Dr Adei, he said, was not duly appointed for the period that he had been in office from October 1, 2005 to date, adding that GIMPA was a public institution and so the anomaly must be properly handled.
“The conduct of the defendants has been most irregular and improper, against the background that GIMPA is a cherished public tertiary institution,” he stated.
Mr Faibille noted that the first time he realised that Dr Adei had been holding himself out as a professor was on July 5, 2002 when the Daily Graphic published a story about his appointment by a Zimbabwe-based institution which was affiliated to the University of Zimbabwe.
He said research that he (the plaintiff) conducted on GIMPA indicated that Dr Adei was a Professor in Leadership but added that the GIMPA statute states that the position of a full professor could not be earned unless the applicant first applied for an associate professorship and went through a vetting procedure.
Mr Faibille said Dr Adei had never been vetted by the GIMPA promotion committee, even if he had been appointed a professor by any institution, as required, and that an assertion by the GIMPA governing body that it was aware of the appointment was not correct.
He questioned how the body could rely on only a newspaper report to base its assertion, since the report could be false, saying that “the African Leadership and Management Academy based in Zimbabwe has not appointed Dr Adei as a professor, neither has it conferred a professorial title, whether full, associate or adjunct, on him”.
“Records at GIMPA show that Dr Adei has not been vetted for the professorial position he claims. He must be restrained because now that the issue has come out that the governing body inherited minutes of a meeting during which Dr Adei’s appointment was mentioned then it means that the procedure has not been followed.
“The fact that the council is aware of Dr Adei’ professorial position is even dangerous because it is coming from a newspaper publication, especially when it can be false,” he said.
Mr Faibille further described as more dangerous the GIMPA Governing Council’s assertion that it was taking steps to confer a full professor on Dr Adei, since, from the statute of GIMPA, it was clear that the first position was an associate professor, after which one was eligible to apply for a full professorship.
He said Dr Adei was not an associate professor at GIMPA and he did not meet the conditions to apply for a full professor since he had been an adjunct professor of the Zimbabwe-based institute.
Hearing continues.