Adebayo Abdulrahman
The management of Nigeria’s premier university, University of Ibadan, UI, has reacted to allegations that the institution plagiarized a memo by the University of Cape Coast on coronavirus.
Sunday Saanu, the media assistant to the Vice-Chancellor of the Institution, Professor Idowu Olayinka, in a rejoinder earlier today said UI wrote the memo using a World Health Organization, WHO, template.
Remember that OYOINSIGHT.COM had earlier fact-checked the criticism using Google image reversal to verify the plagiarism allegations. The result of this fact-check showed that too many similarities existed between the two images to conclude that UI copied the memo from the University of Cape Coast since such a memo did not exist before the 11th of March when it was issued by the Ghana-based institution.
Attempts by OYOINSIGHT.COM to verify whether the World Health Organization(WHO) released a template that schools or institutions should follow to prevent the spread of the virus showed that such a template does not exist.
According to Saanu, “How can UI plagiarize the University of CapeCoast over Coronavirus? To what end? The said memo is a WorldHealth Organization (WHO) template. It is on various websites andplatforms. It is intended to enlighten the public towardscheckmating the spread of the Coronavirus that has been tagged apandemic. What is there to plagiarize in the global instructionsdesigned to avoid contracting the dangerous disease that the medicalprofessionals are still looking for a remedy to curtail?
“There is no UI variant of the virus! The entire world is fighting thesame menace. Are these UI critics saying when the WHO directsthat people should “wash their hands”, UI should say people should“wash their legs” so that we would not be accused of plagiarism?“
He stressed further that an institution of integrity like UI has always been a target of embarrassment but it did not plagiarize the University of Cape Coast, adding that the institution “only reinforced the global instructions towards stopping the rampaging Coronavirus.”
