“Life is what happens to you,” rock legend John Lennon once mused, “when you’re busy making other plans.”
On Wednesday July 4 2018, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun attended the Federal Executive Council meeting at Aso Villa like she’s done since 2015 after President Muhammadu Buhari appointed her Minister of Finance. On the driver’s seat of the engine room of the Nigerian economy, she had a lot on her shoulders. So much was expected of her from some of her colleagues who both admired and disdained her.
Her predecessor Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was so reviled that her traducers tried various means – including kidnapping her octogenarian mother – to bend her to their will. She refused to be bent. Appointed by PMB to succeed Okonjo-Iweala, Adeosun already knew what she would be up against in that position. While her predecessor set her house in order, Ms. Adeosun left much to chance for her enemies to get a leeway into what seemed an impregnable fortress around her.
For starters, her benefactor and former governor of Ogun state Ibikunle Amosun, on whose special recommendation PMB put her in charge of the Finance Ministry, was the president’s main man, a dependable ally. Two, she was not one of those women men like to ogle just for their breathtaking beauty. Adeosun had a formidable intellect to match, a disarming combo which sometimes erode the confidence bit by painful bit of the most self-assured male folk.
But then something happened lending credence to the immortal observation by one of the most famous quartet of The Beatles band. By Saturday of that week July 7 while Adeosun was making plans about going to work the following Monday, a Nigerian online publication Premium Times devoted a six-minute read to how the sitting minister not only skipped NYSC but also presented a forged certificate to back up her claim. It was an exclusive in the real sense of the word and a bombshell the woman with impeccable and enviable credentials as a finance whiz could not survive.
As if roused up from its lethargy, NYSC’s director of Press and Public Relations promised on Monday July 9 to look into the allegations of forgery against the minister. It hardly mattered because, as they say, the deed had been done.
From then on, the only way for the super-bright investment banker and beloved member of PMB’s cabinet was out the door. It did not take long. On September 14 the same year, Mrs. Adeosun tendered her resignation to PMB whose mantra of fighting corruption was still tingling the ears of Nigerians. The opposition PDP still smarting from an unexpected electoral defeat and a phalanx of integrity groups joined in asking for Adeosun’s summary sack if any sense was to be made of PMB’s anti-corruption and sundry integrity issues he promised to tackle head on. Of course, the beleaguered public officer and ministerial appointee took the hint and, possibly bemoaning her fate that her enemies had done their worst, she resigned.
“This has come as a shock to me and I believe that in line with this administration’s focus on integrity,” Adeosun declared in a sort of mea culpa, “I must do the honourable thing and resign.”
Her resignation was a political albatross PMB never wished to hang around his neck, considering that the next presidential election which he hoped to re-contest was less than a year away in 2019. Mr. President promptly accepted Adeosun’s resignation who thereafter became a political footnote, and much to the delight of her nemesis, in Nigeria ’s history.
Another politician was also destined for the dust bin of history shortly before the last general election in 2023. The issue in contention was exactly the same as Adeosun’s five years ago. With the genial face of a seminarian and soft-spoken like one, governorship candidate of Peoples Democratic Party in Enugu state Peter Ndubuisi Mbah was early on called out by a pressure group for presenting a forged NYSC discharge certificate to INEC.
Speaking for Total Support for Rule of Law and Justice Initiative and Enugu Progressive Forum as Coordinator, Cynthia Mabeokwu had invited the press to what the group considered explosive disclosures about Mbah hoping to run the Coal City as its state chief executive.
“We are pleased to inform you that the Certificate of National Service belonging to Peter Ndubuisi Mbah with Certificate Number: A808297 forwarded for verification was not issued by the NYSC,” Mabeokwu declared to journalists at a special press convene in Abuja. The group, according to her, had written to INEC “and obtained Certified True Copies of all the documents and qualifications submitted by the various candidates to the commission.”
The candidate in question, according to the group, should explain to voters in the state “the circumstances of the alleged forgery. This explanation should be in clear precise terms leaving no doubt in the minds of any person,” insisting the explanation “should not be with any prevarications, insults, deflections or evasion of the facts. Where candidate, Peter Ndubuisi Mbah has no explanation for this turn of events, we call on him to immediately apologise to our people and withdraw from the race forthwith and hand himself over to the police, confess his crime and be prosecuted.”
The PDP candidate called their bluff, went ahead and contested the election, defeated his opponents and has since been sworn in as governor. Even before the election proper, the governor’s party responded to the allegations of forgery against their candidate. Director of Public Communications and Spokesperson of the Enugu State PDP Campaign Council Nana Ogbodo denied the allegations from the get-go.
“There is no truth whatsoever to the allegation,” he said, stating further that “we make bold to say that Dr. Peter Mbah was duly mobilised for the one-year mandatory national youth service in Lagos in 2002, duly completed the exercise and was issued with an NYSC discharge certificate.
“We state unequivocally that these purveyors of malicious falsehood are the real forgers, as everything about the letter they claimed to have emanated from the NYSC bears all the imprimaturs of forgery; the language too inelegant and unofficial to have emanated from the NYSC.”
On its part, NYSC Director of Corps Certification, Ibrahim A. Muhammad pitched in, saying the institution never issued any such discharge document to Mbah, prompting Mbah to sue Mohammed and NYSC for N20b as “exemplary damages” for “conspiracy, deceit and misrepresentation of facts.”
While the forgery scandal against Adeosun was clear-cut, that of Mba dragged on for months, allowing the contending parties to properly present their cases with all the facts laid bare for all to see. On the strength of current evidence, the governor seems to be having an edge with his supporters charging NYSC for shoddy record keeping.
Commenting on the matter in an opinion headlined “Mbah and the Rot in NYSC” published in THISDAY of July 22, Law Mefor put the case succinctly: “If the recent report on the investigation by the Department of State Security (DSS) into the discharge certificate feud between the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State surprised anyone, it wasn’t me. Even though I was of the view that both parties should be given the opportunity to prove their respective case, NYSC’s story never looked straight to me, especially knowing the ineptitude, underhand practices, endemic corruption, shoddiness, and the poor and analogue record keeping that have become the hallmarks of most of our public institutions.
“As a psychologist, my field of study teaches me that there is always a motive for every crime. And I have been wondering what the motivation could be for Mbah. If his profile is anything to go by, then he was already a multimillionaire before heading to the UK to study Law. So, he was never in the unemployment market where he needed the NYSC to secure a job.
“Two, it is settled by the courts that one doesn’t need an NYSC discharge certificate to hold a public office. Section 177 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) spells out the qualifications for the office of the governor, and NYSC discharge certificate is not one of them…The audacity with which Mbah has faced the NYSC and its DG, Brig. Gen. Yusha’u Ahmed, does not suggest one who has something to hide. Rather than shop for the proverbial soft landing, Mbah has instead slammed a N20bn lawsuit on the NYSC…
“One interesting fact about Mbah’s lawsuit is his meticulousness in record keeping, even far better than the NYSC. Mbah kept and filed everything: his call-up letter and deployment to Lagos State, meal tickets in the camp, posting letter to the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), rejection letter by the NPA, reposting letter to Udeh & Associates, his letter to NYSC DG seeking a suspension of his service to go for his Bar Final programme, DG’s approval letter, his handwritten letter seeking to return to complete his service year after the programme, pictures, and letter dated 7th May 2003 (with reference number NYSC/DHQ/CM/27/20) directing the Lagos State Director of the agency to “re-instate the corps member to continue his service year from where he stopped, with effect from May 2003.”
Mefor went on to quote Ibrahim Mohammed Director of Corps Certification at the Enugu State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal. In the columnist’s own words, the petition “ended in anti-climax because it ended up affirming virtually everything Mbah had said about his national service and discharge certificate. In his Statement on Oath and evidence before the tribunal, the subpoenaed witness and Director of Corps Certification, Ibrahim Muhammad, averred the following: “That Mr. Mbah Peter Ndubuisi was actually mobilised and deployed to Lagos State by the NYSC for the compulsory national service vide a call-up letter dated 7th January, 2002, with Serial No. 0134613 and Reference No. NYSC/FRN/2001/890351…That after completion of his Law School Programme, Mbah Peter Ndubuisi applied to the DG of NYSC vide letter dated 03/4/2003 for re-mobilisation for national service, to enable him complete his NYSC programme.”
Upon investigation by the DSS Operations and Strategy Department, Mr. Yahaya Isa Mohammed admitted “there were exchanges of correspondences between Mbah and the NYSC at every stage of their interactions. Mbah did not take any action without the NYSC’s approval; that Mbah’s file with the NYSC got missing at some point and NYSC started using temporary file for him.”
Mefor also quoted the national security outfit blaming the NYSC. Since NYSC lacked a proper record, it “resulted in the misplacement of Mbah’s initial file by NYSC and the use of temporary file for him as well as its inability to trace whom or which State(s) 12 of its certificates (A808297 to A808308) were issued; that all through Mbah’s service year, from the first mobilization to his service re-instatement after his Bar Final examination, Udeh & Associates where he did his primary assignment, issued him clearance letter on monthly bases.”
Just as the forgery certificate against Governor Mbah was finding less and less space in the front pages, another shocked the nation soon after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sent his ministerial nominees to the Senate for vetting, confirmation. Made much of during and after the confirmation by the Upper House of the Legislature early this month, reports made the rounds that Mr. Olubunmi Tunji Ojo member of the House of Representatives for Akoko North East/ Akoko North West Federal Constituency of Ondo state presented a discharge certificate with discrepancies.
On Tunji Ojo’s appearance before the Senate, Sadiq Umar representing Kwara North Senatorial District had taken the nominee to task. According to reports, Ojo “claimed to have participated in the scheme between November 2019 and November 2020. His claim is strange given that he was a sitting member of the House of Representatives during the same period.”
First elected in 2019, Ojo sought and won re-election four years later under the All Progressives Congress. What the Senators couldn’t quite clear up was why the nominee “failed to state why his NYSC certificate, a programme he claimed to have completed in 2020, carries February 2023 as the date of issuance. It is also unclear where Mr Tunji-Ojo served as his Place of Primary Assignment (PPA) during the NYSC programme, and whether he received the monthly allowances paid to corps members. Some former and present NYSC officials said it is unlikely for the corps to mobilise a serving politician for national service at the same time he or she is in office.”
Like the governor of Enugu state, Ojo seems to have crossed the certificate hurdle as he has since been confirmed by the Senate.
About the Author
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
