Benedicta Daudu, a professor who was sanctioned for examination misconduct at the University of Jos (UNIJOS) in 2016, has sued PREMIUM TIMES for defamation over the newspaper’s extensive reporting on her examination malpractice scandal.
Mrs Daudu, currently a lecturer and professor at the Taraba State University, filed the defamation suit at the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory in Abuja in March following the newspaper’s latest reporting about her.
In May 2016, Mrs Daudu was caught with “foreign materials” containing answers during a second-semester examination that she was taking as a master’s student of Research and Public Policy at the Faculty of Social Sciences of UNIJOS.
She was then an associate professor of law and Head of the Department of Jurisprudence and International Law of the Faculty of Law at the university but decided to pursue another master’s degree in social sciences.
After finding her guilty of examination misconduct, the university suspended her from the master’s programme for one academic session and suspended her for six months as a staff member.
PREMIUM TIMES first reported the scandal while Mrs Daudu served as a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACAC). As a result of the scandal, she stepped down from the committee.
In September 2023, PREMIUM TIMES reported that despite her examination misconduct scandal, she made the shortlist of applicants for the coveted rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN).
Eventually, she did not make the final list of the successful applicants released by the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC) in October 2023.
Mrs Daudu said the PREMIUM TIMES reports of 15 September 2023 and 12 October 2023 maliciously damaged her reputation and qualifications and ruined her chances of becoming a SAN.
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