The real test of the Rivers Assembly’s latest move is not the warrant issued against PAMO University’s Vice-Chancellor. It is whether the state can reconcile the money released, the students sponsored and the expenditure recorded.
The Rivers State House of Assembly has escalated its investigation into public funding of PAMO University of Medical Sciences, Port Harcourt, with the issuance of a warrant to compel the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Smith I. Jaja, to appear before its ad hoc committee.
The decision was taken on Friday, September 25, 2026, during the Assembly’s 53rd legislative sitting after lawmakers considered the report of the committee chaired by Deputy Speaker Dumle Maol. The probe concerns funds released by the Rivers State Government under its scholarship arrangement with the private medical university.
But beneath the dramatic language of an “arrest warrant” lies a more consequential question for Rivers taxpayers: can a single, independently verifiable paper trail account for every naira released, every student sponsored and every service for which the money was paid?
That question matters because even the Assembly says the documents before it do not agree.
The ₦29bn claim and the missing reconciliation
According to the committee report presented to the House, PAMO University received more than ₦29 billion from the Rivers State Government under the scholarship arrangement.
Speaker Martin Chike Amaewhule said documents submitted by the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education and the Office of the Accountant-General were at variance.
He said that, based on the Assembly’s assessment, only about ₦5 billion of the more than ₦29 billion released appeared to have been utilised. That places the difference at roughly ₦24 billion, although the underlying figures remain disputed and have not been independently established by a public audit.
The Speaker said the government’s intention in entering the scholarship agreement was good, but criticised its implementation.
“Based on the Assembly’s assessment of the records before it, only about N5 billion of the more than N29 billion released to PAMO University appeared to have been utilised,” he said.
That distinction is important.
An amount described as “unaccounted for” is not automatically evidence of theft, diversion or fraud. It can also reflect incomplete documentation, timing differences, duplicated or inconsistent government records, disputed invoices, unidentified beneficiaries or payments recorded differently by separate agencies.
Until the underlying schedules are published and reconciled, the ₦24 billion figure should therefore be treated as an unresolved accounting gap, not a proven loss.
The money trail did not start in 2026
The controversy is not about a new relationship between Rivers Government and PAMO.
In February 2018, then-Governor Nyesom Wike announced a ₦500 million grant to support PAMO University and said the state would enter an agreement to sponsor 100 Rivers State students annually for five years. The announcement was documented by the National Universities Commission.
The state’s support continued under subsequent administrations.
Rivers’ official 2025 budget documents contained a provision for government-sponsored scholarships to PAMO University.
In November 2025, the Rivers State Government also announced another 150 scholarships for indigenes admitted to PAMO to study medicine and other medical-related courses. The Ministry of Education said the beneficiaries were screened and verified before the awards.
PAMO’s own records show that the scholarship relationship continued into the university’s recent academic years. At its 8th matriculation ceremony in April 2025, then-Acting Vice-Chancellor Smith Jaja publicly acknowledged the Rivers State Government’s support through the Rivers Indigene Scholarship Programme. The university also held its fourth convocation around the same period.
Those records establish that the scholarship programme existed and that Rivers students benefited from it.
They do not, on their own, establish whether the total amount reported by the Assembly was correct or whether all payments were properly supported by beneficiary and expenditure records.
That is precisely why the missing reconciliation is now the central issue.
PAMO disputes the Assembly’s account
The university has not accepted the Assembly’s characterisation of the matter.
Earlier this month, PAMO, through its lawyer, Senior Advocate of Nigeria Ayodeji Adedipe, rejected statements attributed to Speaker Amaewhule concerning the management of scholarship funds.
The university said it had never previously been invited to account for the money and maintained that it had “strictly and judiciously” applied scholarship funds to the purpose for which they were provided. It demanded a retraction and apology and threatened legal action.
As the Assembly’s investigation intensified, the university’s legal position became more direct.
Lawyer Chukwuma Chinwo said the legal team had advised the university and the Vice-Chancellor not to appear before the committee because, in its view, the panel lacked jurisdiction over the university in the circumstances.
That creates an important factual divide.
The Assembly says PAMO was repeatedly invited and that its Vice-Chancellor refused to appear.
PAMO’s earlier legal response challenged the basis of the Assembly’s inquiry, while later court proceedings focused on whether the legislature had the authority to compel the university and its Vice-Chancellor to participate.
The dispute is therefore no longer simply about money. It is also about who has the constitutional authority to demand an explanation from a private institution receiving public funds.
What the Constitution actually says
The Assembly has relied on Sections 128 and 129 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.
Section 128 empowers a State House of Assembly to investigate matters within its legislative competence and the conduct of persons or institutions involved in administering money appropriated by the House. Section 129 permits the House or its committee to summon people, demand documents and, where a summoned person fails to attend without a satisfactory excuse, issue a warrant to compel attendance.
The wording matters.
The Constitution describes the warrant in Section 129(1)(d) as a warrant to compel attendance. It is not, by that wording alone, a judicial finding that the person summoned has committed a financial offence.
That makes the next legal steps significant.
The warrant is intended to bring the Vice-Chancellor before the legislative inquiry. Any eventual finding of criminal liability, diversion of funds or other wrongdoing would require the appropriate legal process and evidence.
The court challenge adds another layer
PAMO University and Professor Jaja have already challenged the Assembly’s powers before the Rivers State High Court in Port Harcourt.
On September 23, Justice Mark Chukwu declined an application for an interim order seeking to restrain the House from continuing its investigation. The substantive fundamental-rights case was adjourned to September 29, 2026.
The distinction is crucial: the refusal of an interim order did not amount to a final judicial determination that the Assembly’s position on jurisdiction was correct.
The court has yet to hear and determine the substantive challenge.
That means the warrant issued on September 25 now sits alongside a live court dispute over the limits of legislative investigation.
The Assembly’s own records may hold the key
Perhaps the most revealing element of the dispute is not the ₦29 billion figure itself but the Assembly’s statement that records from Rivers’ own financial institutions do not agree.
The committee chairman, Dumle Maol, had earlier said the Finance Ministry’s documents showed transfers exceeding ₦25 billion to PAMO. He also cited a payment of ₦1.163 billion on March 13, 2026, for the 2025/26 academic session.
Maol said the committee was trying to determine exactly how much the university received, how much was spent and how many Rivers indigenes benefited.
He also pointed to a discrepancy over the start of the scholarship programme, saying Education Ministry records referred to the 2017/18 academic session while the payment record available to the committee showed a January 25, 2019 transaction.
That is not a small bookkeeping detail.
If the programme began in 2017 or 2018 but the surviving payment documentation starts in 2019, the audit trail has a gap that must be closed before anyone can confidently explain the full ₦29 billion figure.
The key documents are therefore not merely PAMO’s accounts.
They include the original scholarship agreement, annual appropriations, Treasury payment instructions, Finance Ministry schedules, Education Ministry beneficiary lists, Accountant-General records, university invoices, student admission records and evidence showing whether each payment corresponded to a named student and an academic year.
The ₦6bn 2026 allocation became the trigger
The latest confrontation can be traced to the Rivers State Government’s 2026 budget.
Governor Siminalayi Fubara presented a proposed budget of about ₦1.854 trillion in July. The Assembly subsequently removed a proposed ₦6 billion allocation for PAMO University during consideration of the appropriation bill.
The Assembly said the decision was driven by questions over previous payments and the university’s accountability.
Channels Television reported that Amaewhule said part of the funds was redirected to the State Primary Healthcare Development Board.
PAMO responded with the threatened defamation action, saying the statements attributed to the Speaker were false and damaging to the institution’s reputation.
The budget dispute therefore transformed what might once have remained an administrative funding arrangement into a public confrontation involving the legislature, a private university, government agencies and now the courts.
The political background cannot be ignored, but it cannot answer the accounting question
PAMO was founded by former Rivers Governor Peter Odili, who remains closely associated with the institution. The scholarship arrangement began during the administration of former Governor Nyesom Wike.
Rivers politics has also been marked by a prolonged dispute between political camps associated with Wike and Governor Fubara, while Amaewhule leads the House of Assembly.
Some commentators and stakeholders have raised questions about whether the PAMO dispute is connected to the wider political environment. The Assembly has rejected that interpretation and has presented the matter as an accountability exercise.
Those competing interpretations are politically significant.
They are not a substitute for documentary proof.
The accounting question remains the same regardless of who founded the university, who authorised the first scholarship or who currently controls political influence in Rivers.
What the recovery committee would have to establish
The Assembly has urged the Rivers State Government to establish a committee to recover any funds found to be unaccounted for and return them to the state’s Consolidated Revenue Account.
For that process to resolve rather than deepen the controversy, the recovery exercise would need to establish the difference between money paid, money owed, money spent, money legitimately retained and money for which documentation is missing.
It would also need a beneficiary-by-beneficiary account.
The state’s own records suggest why.
If the government’s Finance Ministry, Education Ministry and Accountant-General cannot produce matching totals, then a recovery panel looking only at PAMO’s records would not resolve the entire problem.
The state itself is one side of the financial trail.
The students are the immediate human consequence
There is another issue that risks being overshadowed by the confrontation.
The programme was created to train Rivers indigenes in medicine and related disciplines. The state has publicly documented scholarship beneficiaries and PAMO has continued to acknowledge the programme.
Any decision to halt or recover funding must therefore distinguish between unresolved historical accounts and students already admitted under valid scholarship arrangements.
The Assembly’s latest recommendations include calls for the state to address unaccounted funds while the wider dispute continues. The question for government is how accountability can be pursued without creating an educational crisis for students whose sponsorship was previously approved.
The next test is documentary, not rhetorical
Amaewhule told lawmakers the Assembly would continue to act regardless of whose interests were affected.
“No individual can be bigger than the House as an institution empowered by the Constitution,” he said.
The statement captures the constitutional posture of the Assembly.
But the success of the investigation will ultimately depend on something less dramatic: records that can be independently reconciled.
The public needs to know the amount appropriated each year, the amount actually transferred, the number of students covered, their names or verifiable identifiers, the fee structure applied, the period each payment covered and the amount still outstanding, if any.
Until those figures sit on one reconciled ledger, the central question will remain unanswered.
Where did Rivers’ scholarship money go, and can every naira of the disputed ₦29 billion be traced from the state’s treasury to the education of identifiable students?
That is the question the warrant cannot answer.
The documents can.
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