By Farooq A. Kperogi, PhD Twitter: @farooqkperogi There are three false but popular narratives about former Minister of Finance Kemi ...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
PhD
Twitter:
@farooqkperogi
There are three false but popular narratives about former
Minister of Finance Kemi Adeosun’s NYSC certificate forgery that need to be
exploded before we move on to the next scandal in the Buhari administration’s
never-ending cascade of humiliating scandals. The first is that by resigning
her appointment in the wake of revelations that she evaded the mandatory
national youth service for every Nigerian who graduated from university before
the of 30 and forged an exemption certificate she wasn’t entitled to have in
the first place, she showed honor and integrity.
The second is that she deserves sympathy, not condemnation,
because she was the guileless victim of corrupt “trusted associates.” The third
is that she was the first minister to resign her appointment “in principle”—or
the first high-profile public official to be caught in the web of forgery.
Let’s start with the first. Kemi Adeosun didn’t resign her
position as minister because she had any honor; she resigned because of
sustained pressure from critical sections of the commentariat in both
traditional and social media platforms—and because Buhari was gearing up to
opportunistically fire her in the service of his reelection politics.
She and Buhari had hoped that we would all get tired of
their intentionally contemptuous silence and give up. That didn’t happen.
Instead, the quieter they kept, the more vociferous cries for her ouster became.
About 70 days later, she yielded to pressure and buckled under. That’s not
honor. She would have been worthy of being credited with honor only if she
admitted to her forgery and resigned within a week after news of the forgery
became public knowledge.
Most importantly, though, let’s not forget that forgery is a
criminal offense in our laws for which everyday people go to jail every time in
Nigeria. In my July 21, 2018 column titled “Between Adeosun’s Forged NYSC Certificate and Ayodele James’ Fake ICAN Certificate,” I pointed to the blatant
judicial double standard in jailing a lowly civil servant by the name of Lebi Ayodele
James who forged an ICAN certificate to move up the civil service ladder while
leaving untouched Kemi Adeosun who also forged an NYSC exemption certificate
without which she would never be a minister.
I said, “But let this be known: No nation that punishes its
poor and protects its powerful for the same offense can endure… For every
second that James remains in jail while Adeosun, Edozien, and Obono-Obla not
only walk free but live off the fat of the land even when they committed the
same offense as he, the very foundation of Nigeria chips off. A nation whose
foundation comes off piecemeal as a result of blatant, in-your-face judicial
double standard will sooner or later give way.”
Praising Kemi Adeosun for resigning her position as minister
is akin to praising a thief who reluctantly and grudgingly confessed to being a
thief only AFTER she was caught stealing and publicly ridiculed for days on
end. Kemi Adeosun should return all the money she earned from Nigeria from the
time she was commissioner in Ogun State up until September 14 when she resigned
her position as minister. (That was what Ayodele James was compelled to do by
the court). After that, she should be prosecuted and jailed like Ayodele James.
That would be justice. But she has bolted out to London and will probably
escape justice.
Her self-pitying resignation letter that portrays her as a
helpless, unresisting prey of dodgy “trusted associates” doesn’t square with
the facts. In the Premium Times report that blew the lid off her scam, we learn
that “Some federal lawmakers revealed… that the [forgery] 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.”
This clearly shows that Adeosun, contrary to the claims she
made in her resignation letter, always knew that she had a forged NYSC
exemption certificate. The fact of her giving in to the blackmail of the Senate
was all the evidence one needs to know that she was always aware that she had a
fake document—at least for the last three years that she was minister. So she
not only forged, she also lied. That’s not my idea of someone who has honor or
character.
But she’s not alone. There is an epidemic of fakery in high
places in Nigeria. Who remembers Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke, former director-general
of the Nigerian Stock Exchange? I was the first person to bring it to mainstream media attention that her claims to
have earned a Ph.D. in business from the City University of New York (CUNY) in
1983 and to have worked at the New York Stock Exchange on the basis of which
she became the DG of the NSE were fake.
These discoveries were made by the US the Securities and
Exchange Commission, which investigated her. “On January 18, 2011, I caused a
search to be conducted of our student records (including graduation records) at
The Graduate Center, at the request of the United States Securities and
Exchange Commission, to determine if Ms. Ndi Okereke–Onyiuke was ever enrolled
in the Ph.D. Program in Business and if she received a Ph.D. in Business at The
Graduate Center,” Vincent De Luca, Director of Student Services and Senior
Registrar of CUNY’s Graduate School, wrote in a sworn affidavit in New York.
“A thorough search of our electronic and paper files for the
names, Ndi Leche Okereke, Ndi Okereke, Ndi Okereke – Onyiuke and Ndi Lechi
Okereke – Onyiuke was conducted. No record was found that Ms. Ndi Okereke –
Onyiuke ever enrolled in the Ph.D. Program in Business or received a Ph.D. in
Business at The Graduate Center.”
But as I pointed out
in my June 25, 2011 column titled “Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke’s Fake Doctorate and Professorship,” “Strangely, however, no Nigerian newspaper has touched the
story with a ten-foot pole.”
Even the authenticity of President Buhari’s school
certificate is the subject of controversy. Although many classmates of the
president (who detest him) have told me in confidence that he did take his
school certificate exams, I can’t wrap my head around why he has chosen to hire
more than a dozen Senior Advocates of Nigeria over this. Isn’t it infinitely
cheaper, less burdensome, and more fitting to just produce the certificate than
to hire expensive lawyers to defend your right to not produce it?
This is particularly curious because the London GCE O-level
certificate Buhari said he has lost isn’t an irreplaceable document. All he has
to do is write to the body that conducted the exam and he will get a
replacement within days. Why is he reluctant to do that if he indeed took the
exam? Something doesn’t add up.
In a way, people who are incensed that Adesoun was hounded
out of office for an offense most people in power in Nigeria are guilty of have
a point.
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