Connect with us

Politics

Nigeria’s Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun in certificate forgery scandal

Published

on

Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, did not participate in the mandatory one-year national youth service scheme. Instead, she forged an exemption certificate many years after graduation, PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report.

The year-long service, organised by the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC), is compulsory for all Nigerians who graduate from universities or equivalent institutions at less than 30 years of age.

In addition to being a requirement for government and private sector jobs in Nigeria, the enabling law prescribes punishment for anyone who absconds from the scheme or forges its certificates.

Eligible Nigerians who skipped the service are liable to be sentenced to 12 months imprisonment and/or N2,000 fine, according to Section 13 of the NYSC law.

Section 13 (3) of the law also prescribes three-year jail term or option of N5,000 fine for anyone who contravenes provision of the law as Mrs Adeosun has done.

Subsection 4 of the same section also criminalises giving false information or illegally obtaining the agency’s certificate. It provides for up to three-year jail term for such offenders.

Mrs Adeosun’s official credentials obtained by PREMIUM TIMES show that the minister parades a purported NYSC exemption certificate, which was issued in September 2009, granting her exemption from the mandatory service on account of age.

HOW IT HAPPENED

Mrs Adeosun graduated from the Polytechnic of East London in 1989, at the age of 22. According to her curriculum vitae, Mrs Adeosun was born in March 1967.

The institution changed name to University of East London in 1992. Mrs Adeosun has her certificate issued in the new name.

Having graduated at 22, it is obligatory for Mrs Adeosun to participate in the one-year national service, for her to qualify for any job in Nigeria.

However, at the time of her graduation, the young Folakemi Oguntomoju, as she then was, did not return to Nigeria to serve her fatherland.

Upon graduation in 1989, the Applied Economics graduate pursued fast-paced career in the British public and private sectors.

She first landed a job at British Telecoms, but left after a year to join Goodman Jones, an accounting and investment firm, as audit officer. She served there till 1993.

In 1994, Mrs Adeosun joined London Underground Company as Internal Audit Manager, before switching to Prism Consulting, a finance firm, where she worked between 1996 until 2000.

In 2000, Mrs Adeosun was hired by PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she worked for two years.

When she eventually returned to Nigeria in 2002, Mrs Adeosun still did not deem it necessary to participate in the NYSC scheme. She simply accepted a job offer at a private firm, Chapel Hill Denham.

However, ostensibly concerned that she might run into trouble for skipping the mandatory scheme, Mrs Adeosun, sometime in 2009, procured a fake exemption certificate.

The NYSC does not issue exemption certificate to anyone who, like the minister, graduates before turning 30, top officials of the scheme familiar with the matter told PREMIUM TIMES.

Mrs Adeosun’s ‘certificate’ is dated September 9, 2009, and was purportedly signed by Yusuf Bomoi, a former director-general of the corps.

Officials said Mr. Bomoi stepped down from the NYSC in January 2009, and could not have signed any certicate for the corps eight months after. The retired brigadier general passed on in September 2017.lg.php.gif

ILLEGAL JOBS

Using that fake certificate, Mrs Adeosun went on to clinch high-profile jobs at Quo Vadis Partnerships (managing director), Ogun State Government (commissioner for finance), and Federal Government of Nigeria (minister of finance).

By the provision of Section 12 of the NYSC Act, employers must demand NYSC certificates from prospective employees. The law also mandates employees to present only genuine certificates for that purpose.
Section 12 of the Act reads:

“For the purposes of employment anywhere in the Federation and before employment, it shall be the duty of every prospective employer to demand and obtained from any person who claims to have obtained his first degree at the end of the academic year 1973-74 or, as the case may be, at the end of any subsequent academic year the following:-

a. a copy of the Certificate of National Service of such person issued pursuant to section 11 of this Decree
b. a copy of any exemption certificate issued to such person pursuant to section 17 of this Decree
c. such other particulars relevant there to as may be prescribed by or under this Decree.”

Read Also: Head of Nigeria’s legislature, Saraki, scales judicial hurdle, may fancy 2019 presidential chances

A lawyer, Sagir Gezawa, described jobs Mrs Adeosun has had in Nigeria as illegal.

“The combined effect of sections 12 and 13 of the NYSC Act is that it is illegal to hire a person who graduated but failed to make himself or herself available to serve, or falsify any document to the effect that he or she has served or exempted from serving.”

However, without demanding or verifying the veracity of the certificate presented by Mrs Adeosun, two Nigerian companies, the Ogun State Government and the Federal Government of Nigeria employed her at various times.

On becoming governor in 2011, Ibikunle Amosun nominated her into his cabinet. She proceeded to serve as commissioner of finance for four years.

In November 2015, Mrs Adeosun was sworn in as minister by President Muhammadu Buhari, and assigned the all-important finance ministry, after a supposed security and Senate screening.

The State Security Service, charged with vetting appointees to top government positions, failed to detect that her NYSC certificate was fake.

The Senate, which received the fake certificate as part of the documents Mrs Adeosun submitted for her confirmation hearing, detected the discrepancy, PREMIUM TIMES understands.

But it nonetheless proceeded to clear her for the top office. Those familiar with the matter said the leadership of the National Assembly used that information to blackmail and extort Mrs Adeosun for years.

FAKE CERTIFICATE?

We investigated Mrs Adeosun’s so-called NYSC certificate for months, determining eventually that it is fake.
“This one is an Oluwole certificate,” a top official of the corps said after we showed him a copy of the document. “We did not issue it and we could not have issued it.” Oluwole is a location in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, where fraudsters possess an amazing dexterity in the act of forging all kinds of documents.

Several current and former officials of the scheme told this paper that the NYSC would never issue an exemption certificate to anyone who graduated before age 30 and did not fall into the categories of persons exempted by the corps’ enabling Act.

By that law, there are four categories of Nigerians eligible for exemption certificates. The first are those who graduated after turning 30. The second are holders of national honours. The third are persons who served in the armed forces or the police for up to nine months. The last category are staff of intelligence agencies, or the armed forces.

Therefore, having graduated at 22, and with no record of national honours or service in the intelligence or armed forces, Mrs Adeosun is not qualified for exemption, officials said.

Yet, the so-called exemption certificate she holds gave age as the reason for her exemption.

“This is not the size of our exemption certificate,” another top official of the corps remarked when shown a copy of the minister’s ‘certificate’. “The calligraphy is also different”.

On another day, another staff questioned the genuineness of the ‘certificate’ based on the font of the serial number.

“Look at this, look at this other one, the numbering is different,” the staff said while comparing Mrs Adeosun’s certificate with a genuine one on file.

Mrs Adeosun’s name also failed to pop up during multiple checks of the exemption certificates registers kept by the corps, officials said.

One official, who perused the register recently, noted that the sequence of serial numbers for certificates issued in 2009 did not correspond to that in Mrs Adeosun’s purported certificate.

The signature on the ‘certificate’ is also suspect. As indicated earlier in this report, it was purportedly signed by an official who left the corps eight months before the document was made. One official described that claim as “barefaced lie and total impossibility”.

A TOOL FOR BLACKMAIL

PREMIUM TIMES reported Friday how the certificate scandal was turned into a tool for blackmail by a National Assembly cartel that used it to coerce the finance minister to keep releasing funds to the lawmaking arm.

Some federal lawmakers revealed to this paper that the discrepancy was detected by the Senate during the minister’s confirmation hearing. But rather than probe the issue, they turned it into a tool against Mrs Adeosun.

The report linked the certificate scandal to the minister’s excessive, even illegal, funding of the lawmakers, including recently funnelling a N10billion largesse to that arm of government.

MINISTER, NYSC WONT REACT

Although several of its officials informally cooperated with our reporters in the course of this investigation, the NYSC leadership declined to respond to our official correspondences.

We first sent a letter to Director-General Sule Kazaure (brigadier-general) requesting him to help determine the authenticity or otherwise of the minister’s ‘certificate’.

After we received no response for several weeks, we sent in a Freedom of Information request on the matter. Weeks after, we are still waiting for response.

Insiders say authorities of the corps have been under severe pressure in the past weeks not to respond to our inquiries.

One of our reporters also requested a reaction from Oluyinka Akintunde, the spokesperson to Mrs Adeosun, who was briefed on the outcome of our investigations. He is yet to send a response to our inquiry.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Politics

South African police arrest 87 persons ahead of planned protest by opposition party, EFF

Published

on

Reports from South Africa on Monday morning say security forces have arrested 87 persons across the country over public violence ahead of planned protests by the Marxist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party.

Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa labeled the planned national wide protest by members of the opposition party as an attempt to overthrow him.

The EFF called for a national shutdown to protest crippling power cuts and demand the resignation of President Cyril Ramaphosa. The party’s strong base consists of working-class Black South Africans who feel left out of the country’s prosperity since the governing African National Congress (ANC) ended white minority rule in 1994.

As reported by National intelligence body NatJOINTS, 41 people were arrested in Gauteng, including Pretoria and Johannesburg, 29 people were arrested in North West, and 15 people were arrested in Free State. Mpumalanga and the Eastern Cape have also been arrested, according to NatJOINTS.

“Law enforcement officers are on high alert and will continue to prevent and combat any acts of criminality,” NatJOINTS said.

The country lately has had challenges with its electricity supply which has forced struggling state power company, Eskom to announce the previous series of power rotation arrangements.

Eskom has implemented scheduled electricity outages every day in 2023, with most households and businesses without power for up to 10 hours a day.

Continue Reading

Politics

South Africa to host Russia’s President Putin despite ICC ruling

Published

on

South Africa has insisted that it is not without knowledge of what is at stake ahead of a proposed visit by Vladimir Putin after an international court issued an arrest warrant against the Russian leader.

President Cyril Ramaphosa through his spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya on Sunday said it was aware of legal obligation as Russian President Putin is expected to visit South Africa in August to attend a BRICS summit.

In 2006, the foreign ministers of Brazil, Russia, India, and China met for the first time on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, marking the beginning of BRIC cooperation.

“We are, as the government, cognisant of our legal obligation. However, between now and the summit we will remain engaged with various relevant stakeholders,” spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said.

President Putin is expected to attend the 15th BRICS summit, as he did in 2013.

“We note the report on the warrant of arrest that the ICC has issued,” Magwenya said.

“It remains South Africa’s commitment and very strong desire that the conflict in Ukraine is resolved peacefully through negotiations.”

According to the International Court of Justice (ICC), President Putin is allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of the population (children) and the unlawful transfer of the population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation (under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute). The crimes were allegedly committed in Ukrainian-occupied territory at least from 24 February 2022.

There has been back and forth between the US and the global South, notably Russia and China over influence and relations with Africa.

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, plans to host the second Russia-Africa summit in July in St. Petersburg, an event intended to underline his attempts to curry favour in African nations after being shunned by the West over his invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

Continue Reading

EDITOR’S PICK

Sports7 hours ago

Kenyan marathoner, Hellen Obiri, breaks event record at United Airlines meet

Kenyan two-time world 5000m champion, Hellen Obiri, on Sunday, broke the United Airlines NYC Half record in New York City,...

VenturesNow8 hours ago

Ghana’s finance minister, Ken Ofori, to meet Chinese officials over debt restructuring

Ghana’s finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta will meet Chinese officials on Wednesday to discuss a proposed restructuring of Ghana’s debt, a...

VenturesNow8 hours ago

Zambian authorities show concern over market abuses in energy sector. Here’s why

Zambian authorities are concerned about market abuses and social injustices in the energy sector, specifically regarding renewable energy technologies. The...

Strictly Personal8 hours ago

The electorate and governance in the Ghanaian political system, By Michael Akeno

Abraham Lincoln, a one-time great President of America, made the follow­ing landmark statement: “Government of The People, By The People,...

Tech8 hours ago

Microsoft launches Season 4 of coding competition for African university students

The Microsoft Africa Development Centre’s (ADC) Game of Learners (GOL), has launched the Season 4 of its Coding Competition for...

Metro8 hours ago

UN report estimates 43,000 died in Somali drought in 2022

A new report released on Monday by the United Nations has estimated that at least 43,000 people died in Somalia’s...

Metro8 hours ago

Gunmen kill nine Chinese nationals at Central African Republic mine

Armed gunmen have killed nine Chinese nationals and wounded two at a gold mining site in the Chimbolo region of...

Culture12 hours ago

South African model, Faith Nketsi, cries out after being labelled ‘non-marriage material’

South African super model, dancer and media personality, Faith Nketsi, has cried out over social media taunts that she is...

Politics15 hours ago

South African police arrest 87 persons ahead of planned protest by opposition party, EFF

Reports from South Africa on Monday morning say security forces have arrested 87 persons across the country over public violence ahead...

Strictly Personal1 day ago

As Nigeria’s judges get set to begin voting, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

This week, the opening salvo will be fired to signal the onset of the final round of voting in Nigeria’s...

Trending