Despite the allegations against him, the National Centre for Technology Management (NACETEM) Director-General/Chief Executive Officer, Prof. Okechukwu Ukwuoma remains unruffled.

In a chat after much persuasion, he dismissed all the allegations and insisted that “busy bodies are just talking.” Ukwuoma said: “I don’t know why they are writing petitions.  You said something about employment, the Board of the agency employed. There is hardly one promotion that I have carried out since I came. The examination and interview were carried out in Abuja.

“Do I have the right to promote apart from the minister? Does agency promote? The board conducted the examination in conjunction with the ministry and after that the report was sent to the ministry.

“All the things they write about me…that I carried out illegal employment or black market employment and that I am destroying the place because I said I have a job. Did I come from the bush? I am a professor in the university before I contested for this job. If I finish my term here, I have somewhere to go. If this place collapses, I have somewhere to go. Because of the simple advise I gave to the workers that they should do something, like this petition now, if the Federal Government says, close down this place, my job is waiting for me at the university.

“So if I say it, it’s not a boast, it is a fact, I am a professor in a university and I am even on a sabbatical in another university. So, I am a professor in two universities at the same time.  That high profile staff members are resigning and we want to replace them with inferior, inferior what? Inferior is a hate statement, every time I go to Abuja, they show me the petitions, the Permanent Secretary showed me one.”

Ukwuoma berated those who claim he has no achievement, saying lack of funds incapacitated the agency.

“Ask those people if any system works without funds. In January last year, our salaries were stopped. That is… every money coming to this agency was stopped.  In March, they restored the salary but no grant. So now, we are working as pensioners, no overhead, and no capital.

“How then do we make progress? This seat that I am using, I bought it with my personal money because I am having waist pain and needed this orthopedic chair. Every effort made to get involved with one MOU or the other is frustrated. Should I go and sell my father’s house and bring the money to run the agency?”

The director said those who left did so for greener pastures because the university system pays better remuneration than a research institute.

“It is an open system, like a market place people come in and go; now there are some allowances that the university pays that a research institution will not pay and all the people that left entered the university.

“They went for greener pastures. They saw better opportunities. It is a normal thing and there is nobody that left here that has not entered the university.”