Nigeria’s minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun is
currently embroiled in a serious certificate
scandal. Adeosun is alleged to have forged her
National Youth Service Corps Certificate(NYSC).
According to Premium Times, the Minister did not participate in the
mandatory one-year national youth service scheme. Instead, she
allegedly forged an exemption certificate many years after
graduation.
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.
According to Premium Times, Mrs. Adeosun’s official credentials
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.
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.
It was further gathered by Premium Times that Mrs. Adeosun’s
‘certificate’ is dated September 9, 2009, and was purportedly
signed by Yusuf Bomoi, a former director-general of the
corps. Bomoi stepped down from the NYSC in January 2009, and
could not have signed any certificate for the corps eight months
after. The retired brigadier general passed on in September 2017.
An official of the NYSC also described the certificate as an
‘Oluwole Certificate’ adding that they “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.
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