Ezeonwuka Finally Shuts Tansian Varsity Take-Off Campus At Oba Over N60m Debt

By Chuks Eke

The owner of Ranent Industries Company Limited, which is based in Oba in the Idemili South Local Government Area of Anambra State, Chief Rommy Ezeonwuka, has sealed the company’s premises, which he gave to Tansian University’s administration in Umunya, Anambra State, to serve as the university’s take-off campus.

This comes in response to a recent court ruling that gave Ezeonwuka the right to close the campus and sell both moveable and immovable assets to recoup the approximately N60 million in unpaid rent or honoraria that the university owed him for giving the Ranent property to the administration as a take-off campus.

The university’s security personnel were driven out by Ezeonwuka, who broke through the entrance gate with some sandbags yesterday along with court representatives and the management of Ranent Industries.

To verify the seal’s authenticity, the court bailiffs altered the signposts with some text and affixed copies of the court rulings everywhere on the entry gates. Welcome to Oba’s Take-Off Campus of Tansian University. Moreover, they affixed signs reading “No Trespassing” to various signposts.

After several years of unpaid honoraria, Ezeonwuka and Renant Industries successfully sued Tansian University in court, winning millions of naira. Before Akam’s passing approximately two years ago, Ezeonwuka and the late Monsignor John Bosco Akam, the university’s founder, agreed on an honorarium of N10 million annually.

To obtain a consent judgment that the university authorities should pay Ezeonwuka N10 million annually as rent for donating the Ranent property with structures to the university for use as a take-off campus approximately ten years ago, Ezeonwuka and Monsignor Akam jointly signed the honorarium agreement with their witnesses.

When approving the university’s establishment, the National Universities Commission (NUC) instructed that Ezeonwuka’s yearly payment from the university’s authorities be referred to as honorarium rather than house rent or property rent because a university cannot be located in a rented flat.

The University’s moveable and immovable properties may be seized to satisfy Ezeonwuka’s outstanding debt, according to a ruling made by His Lordship Hon. Justice Arinze Akabua of the High Court of Anambra State, held in Ogidi.

Additionally, Judge Akabua directed the judgment debtors/respondents (Tansian university authorities) to immediately leave their take-off campus, or temporary site, located in Umuogali Village Oba, from the grounds owned by the judgment creditors/applicants (Ezeonwuka/Ranent Industries Limited).

Shortly after regaining possession of his belongings, Ezeonwuka, the company’s chairman, spoke to the media. He thanked the court for providing the last chance for the average person and lamented the numerous fortunes he had lost due to the ordeal.

The decaying state of university campuses disgusted him, and he questioned how students could study in such an unclean atmosphere.

“This institution may not be synonymous with cleanliness—the two hostels are revolting, the surroundings are nauseating, and the university is uninhabitable and filthy, with mountains of trash and a poor sewage system so vile that it guarantees nightmares,” Ezeonwuka said.

Following his property recovery, he revealed that he had finalised plans to bring his Chinese partners to Nigeria by the end of the first quarter of 2024 to revitalize the shuttered Ranent Industries Company Ltd. and provide jobs for more than 5,000 Anambrarians.