Group drags Edo Attorney General: petitions NUC, queries professorship title
Prof. Otaru
The Concerned Law Students of Faculty of Law, Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, has petitioned the National Universities Commission (NUC) to take a closer look at the professorship title of the Edo State Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, Prof. Roland Otaru (SAN).
The group wondered how the professorship title was conferred on the Commissioner, alleging he may have compromised the authorities of the school to get it.
In a petition to the NUC and Council of Legal Education, the students described the conferment as “a great academic fraud” and called for investigation.
The petition signed by Comrade. K. Akanbi, dated 7th December 2025, the group noted that Otaru is a full time private legal practitioner in Ilorin Kwara State who got his PhD in law two years ago from one private University in Ogun State, reports Vanguard.
The petition said “he has neither taught nor examined postgraduate law students anywhere in Nigeria to qualify him for appointment as an Associate Professor of law (Reader), let alone Professor of law.”
The petition reads in part: “It is for this reason that we ask that the circumstances surrounding the alleged conferment of the Professor of law status on Mr. Roland Otaru is investigated and the culprits brought to book.”
The group threatened a week-long protest by mid-January 2026 if the issue is not investigated. “As law students, we have decided to speak up, because our lecturers who know the truth are afraid of shaking tables.”
When contacted, Otaru denied the allegation, saying it could be a deliberate attempt to smear his rising profile as he insisted that he was duly appointed as a Professor by the Senate of the University.
“It is very funny. The Senate of the university conferred it on me, I have a letter to that effect and on that day, I was not the only one, we were about four, it was an approval from the Senate of the University and I delivered the lecture on that day, 9th of December 2024.
“I am a PhD holder, I have two Masters Degrees and I have up to five or six fellowships. I have been SAN working for the past 20 years so what are they talking about? Maybe somebody there engineered it because of my rising profile.
“It is not a fake award, I don’t know what they want but there is no cause for alarm. I have the letter of the award.
“They were there that day, they were there when I delivered the lecture, it was an assemblage of all students in that faculty and I delivered the lecture there. There was no financial inducement, nothing like that, I think it was based on merit.”
A source in the Dean of Students office in the school told Vanguard that they were not aware of the existence of such a group in the University.”
