BEVERLY HILLS, October 04, (THEWILL) – The resignation of former Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, over her forged Certificate of Exemption purportedly issued by the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, has put the integrity of the country’s institutions on the line.
Sadly, Adeosun passed multiple screenings at two levels of government where she served. These checks were done by the Ogun State government, the Senate and the Department of State Services, DSS before her employment in government. So what went wrong? Why were the agencies unable to detect a forged document during their background checks on the former Minister of Finance? Or were there no checks at all?
In her letter of resignation after a presidency investigation indicted her for holding a forged NYSC document, Adeosun, who had lived in Great Britain all her life before returning to Nigeria, had blamed “trusted associates” for procuring the fake document without her knowledge.
Nigeria clearly needs total fixing. The implication of Adeosun’s certificate scandal and other certificate controversies surrounding public officials are grave, scary, embarrassing and further erodes the credibility of government and our institutions.
Certificate and document fixing is one of the worst forms of corruption and it needs to be crushed by all means necessary.
There must be thousands of officials that are serving in government and private institutions with forged documentations. One of the them according to multiple reporting is the Chairman of the Special Investigative Panel for the Recovery of Public Property, Chief Okoi Obono-Obla, who WAEC confirmed has a dodgy West African School Certificate, WASC.
How these individuals managed to evade detection during their screening is heartbreaking and shocking.
Take a look at the case of Communications Minister, Barrister Adebayo Shittu, who dodged the mandatory NYSC and is still hanging on to a job he is unqualified for because our security agencies failed to their work diligently.
Nigeria must wake up to its national security nightmare and begin to urgently fix its broken system. How much reputational damage can the country endure? We can do way better as a people so that foreign countries can stop laughing at us.
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