In recent times, the menace of certificate forgery appears to have become Nigeria’s sword of Damocles, with each episode of forgery waiting to embarrass the Country in no small measure. The initially highly covert and secretive business seems to have gained tremendous traction quite recently, becoming hopelessly brazen. Among the usual culprits of certificate forgery are politicians often desperate to outmanoeuvre their political competitors in order to gain various degrees of undue advantage.
The cases of Salisu Buhari, a former Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives who resigned in 1999 courtesy of allegations of certificate forgery and Kemi Adeosun, a former Minister of Finance who admitted to parading a fake NYSC Certificate, quickly come to mind. Still to be mentioned are civil/public servants whose “entry qualifications” sufficed in the forgery of birth certificates or use of other means to achieve age reduction in order to guarantee more reckonable days of service than their true ages would have afforded them. In 2019, Okoi Obono-Obla, a former Chairman of the Special Investigation Panel for the Recovery of Public Property was sacked on allegations of forging his West African School Certificate. Similarly, Mr Chima lgwe, a former Acting Director-General of the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi was accused of claiming to be a PhD holder from a certain Universite d’Abomey-Calavi in Benin Republic albeit that he was yet to conclude the programme. Even the academia is not left out of the mess as we still remember the unfortunate news of the discovery of over 100 fake professors in Nigeria by the Nigerian Universities Commission in 2019. There was also the case of one Peter Ekemezie reported by the Punch Newspaper of 17 October, 2019 to be masquerading as a Senior Lecturer at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka with a fake Masters’ Degree. The story goes that shortly after the detection, the Institution also withdrew the PhD awarded to him on grounds of plagiarism. Additionally, during a National Teachers’ Institute graduation ceremony in Kaduna State, Patrick Yakowa, a former Governor of the state lamented that the credentials of about 2000 teachers serving in public schools are fake. Interestingly, Mallam Nasir el Rufai’s sacking of 2,357 teachers a few years later appeared to confirm the rot in Kaduna education; but if the teachers are culpable of certificate faking, one begins to wonder what their students would do. Incidentally, one does not need to go far to find out. The ferocious resilience with which Miss Mmesoma Ejikeme defended her forged UTME result even in the face of evidence establishing a prima facie case of forgery still elicits shudders from anyone who remembers that story. Mmesoma who was accused of changing her UTME score from 249 to 362 held on to her lies so dogmatically that it took the intervention of a House of Representatives-backed investigative hearing for her to confess.
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Unfortunately, the rot in the document falsification “sector” does not begin and end with teachers and students or with politicians and civil/public servants. Cases abound of supposed core professionals caught in the act, and in very embarrassing circumstances. For instance, Nigerians woke up sometime in 2015 to the arrest of one Nwosu Angela Njide who had been masquerading as a medical doctor with forged documents. What was striking about Njide’s case was not the fact that she forged documents. Rather, it was her uncanny ability to evade proper scrutiny, to the extent that as at the time she was finally caught, the fake doctor admitted to have worked in highly reputable medical institutions like the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH) and the British American Tobacco Clinic, Ibadan. Furthermore, there was the case of one Mr Chris Elisha arrested for illegally practising as a lawyer for 15 years, in addition to Uche Nwajiakwu who was arrested by the Police in Lagos for masquerading as a lawyer at the Ojo Magistrate Court for 3 years. Perhaps one of the most intriguing stories ever told about how forgery could ridicule a people is seen in Emelike Obinna’s “Certificate Forgery and Victims of Own Craft” published online in the Business Day of 23 February, 2020. According to Obinna,
“On September 15, 2010, a family was at the Murtala International Airport Lagos to bid farewell to their son who was travelling to Spain for football trail (sic) with a Spanish second division club. Happy to see the aspiring international footballer make his way through the immigration and security posts for boarding, the family left praising God for the beginning of a journey that would change their fortune and their life for good. Sadly, after several hours, the young man did not call from Spain, but from Panti Police station in Yaba, Lagos, where he was detained for travelling with fake Spanish visa, and travel insurance. The father could not drive to the police station to see him because he suspected that his driver’s license was fake (sic), having been delivered by same contact that arranged fake travel documents to (sic) his innocent son.”
Interestingly, certificate forgery appears to have exacerbated in recent times as to feature prominently in elections petitions arising from the recently concluded General Elections in Nigeria, where a number of presidential and gubernatorial candidates have been accused of one form of forgery or the other. More disturbing is the seeming reluctance of the Nigerian society to deal decisively with the hydra-headed monster of certificate forgery in a manner that projects the seriousness of a society in a hurry for development. Despite the embarrassing implications of the “Oluwole phenomenon” as Aladeloba et al. (2019) describe it, the government and people of Nigeria appear to have acquiesced to this destructive trend in society with little regard for its futuristic albatross to the Country. For those who do not know, Oluwole is a street in Lagos, Nigeria, where any document could be forged. Accordingly, it is rather painful that despite Oluwole’s notoriety for the falsification of documents which is well-known to the Police and other relevant security agencies, the community of document counterfeiters in that street remains largely intact. Unfortunately, as various commentators have observed, several Oluwoles appear to be springing up in the Country mainly due to government’s inability to take a drastic action against this growing community, such that parts of Oyingbo, Ebute Metta, Lagos and Old Market Road, Onitsha appear to have subscribed to the pernicious economy.
There are 2 implications of certificate forgery for the economy and image of Nigeria. The first implication suffices in the current trend in which the Country’s image continues to depreciate before the international community, portraying Nigerians as fraudsters and reducing anybody carrying the Nigerian passport to a common criminal. Related to this trend is the continuing degradation of Nigerian academic credentials abroad for fear of lack of authenticity, so that the original problem of deteriorating education in Nigeria is now compounded by the forgery of educational certificates.
The second implication is futuristic, and potentially supports the race towards a failed state. There is no doubt that many public individuals in Nigeria occupy offices based on forged certificates and this probably explains the reason for the lack of quality decisions in government resulting in poorly crafted policies which further impoverish and imperil the masses rather than lift them out of squalor. As the Latin maxim goes, “nemo dat quod non habet” (no one gives what he doesn’t have); hence, a society which operates on forged certificates attempts to put something on nothing. The result is a disastrous crash.
Consequently, in order to address the menace of certificate forgery in Nigeria effectively, government at all levels should mandate security agencies to raid notorious “enclaves” on regular basis. Additionally, the legislature at all levels should evolve laws that are in tandem with the reality of pervasive forgery in Nigeria, and impose stricter penalties for forgery and perjury. Finally, the National Assembly should amend the Nigerian Constitution to allow for only traditional oath-taking by potential public office holders in order to encourage speedy dispensation of justice to liars, forgers and perjurers by Amadioha, Sango and other African deities of similar temperament.
The ‘Alternative Viewpoint,’ penned by Flight Lieutenant Christopher Uchenna Obasi (Retired), is a sophisticated weekly column that delves into the complex dimensions of socio-political issues. While it concentrates primarily on the African context, the column also casts a wider analytical net to encompass global affairs. Through incisive commentary and in-depth analysis, it aims to offer alternative perspectives that challenge mainstream narratives and provoke thoughtful discourse on critical matters.