The governorship candidate of the
Peoples Democratic Party in Kwara State in the forthcoming general elections,
Razak Atunwa, did not participate in Nigeria’s compulsory national youth
service scheme.
PremuimTimes reports that he
procured a forged discharge certificate of the National Youth Service Corps
(NYSC) which he submitted to the PDP to prove his eligibility for public
office.
Atunwa’s certificate scandal is
coming four months after Kemi Adeosun, former minister of finance, was exposed
for doing same.
Adeosun has since resigned and
returned to the UK where she grew up.
The Kwara politician’s conduct comes to light exactly a month after it was reported that the Minister
of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, also dodged the compulsory service, making
him ineligible for public office and employment in Nigeria. Although the minister was later
disqualified by his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) from running for
governorship of his native Oyo State, President Muhammadu Buhari is yet to
remove him from office.
The NYSC law requires every
Nigerian who attended university or polytechnic to participate in the national
youth scheme for one year after graduation, provided the person finished before
age 30. Failure to serve would prohibit such individual from gainful employment
in Nigeria, and making false claims about serving could attract up to 14 years
in jail.
Also, anyone who graduates before
30 but deliberately declines to serve has committed a crime that could attract
12-month imprisonment, even if the person did not forge NYSC documents.
Only a person who obtained a
degree after 30 or served in the military or won national honours medal would
qualify for exemption certificate under the NYSC law.
Mr Atunwa, born on October 17,
1969, said he studied law at the University of East London, graduating in 1992
at age 23.
Having earned a bachelor’s degree
at 23, Mr Atunwa, going by Section 2 of the NYSC Act, should have participated
in the year-long national service.
THE AUDACIOUS FORGERY
But rather than present himself
for national service, Mr. Atunwa stayed back in the United Kingdom, returning
only in 2005 to join the cabinet of then Governor Bukola Saraki in Kwara State
at the age of 36.
Between 2005 and 2010 when he
stepped down to run for office, the politician was commissioner at four
different ministries, including Land and Housing, Works and Transport,
Information and Home Affairs and Finance.
It was not immediately clear
whether or not Mr Atunwa presented any NYSC document to authorities since 2005
when he was first appointed commissioner, 2011 when he became speaker and 2015
when he became member of the House of Representatives.
But to secure the PDP
governorship ticket on October 1, he submitted a counterfeit NYSC discharge
certificate and accompanied it with an affidavit, indicating he lied on oath,
an offence that attracts up to 14 years in jail.
Mr Atunwa — who claimed he
qualified for law practice in the United Kingdom after obtaining undergraduate
and master’s degrees at separate universities in London — indicated in the
nomination document he submitted at the PDP national secretariat in Abuja that
he partook in the youth service scheme between 1995 and 1996.
The lawmaker, who is chair of the
House Committee on Justice, then accompanied it with a notarised affidavit
sworn at the Kwara State High Court in Ilorin on September 10. The document was
attached to his PDP expression of interest form.
He signed the document despite a
clause indicating he remained automatically disqualified as candidate if any
statement or information he provided is found to be false, inaccurate, or
mislead the party or its agents from making proper assessment of his competence
to contest the governorship election under the platform of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP).
It remains to be seen if the PDP
will enforce its own rule and disqualify him as a result of this revelation.
Governorship elections are scheduled to hold February 2019.
One could see at first glance
that Mr. Atunwa’s so-called discharge certificate is fake.
For one, Mr Atunwa’s
‘certificate’ purportedly obtained in 1996 carried the signature of Walter Oki
(brigadier general at the time). But Mr Oki was only made NYSC director-general
in 2002. In 1996, Soyemi Sofoluwe (brigadier general) was director-general of
the corps and signed all discharge and exemption certificates during the
period. He was succeeded by S.M. Dule (brigadier general), who served as
director-general between 1996 and 2000.
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| The NYSC Certificate |
To further crosscheck the authenticity of Mr Atunwa’s ‘certificate’, It was compared his with original ones that bore the basics of the document, especially those from foreign university graduates.
At least three ministers who
returned to Nigeria to serve after finishing from schools in the UK and the
United States had similar call-up mark in their certificates, which usually
carries the acronym of the institution, the state where the participant served,
where the person was called up, the year of service and the serial number for
the certificate.
For instance, Ibe Kachikwu, the
minister of state for petroleum, has his NYSC certificate marked as
NYSC/OY/FORN/82/7101. Mr Kachikwu was deployed for service in Oyo State (OY) on
August 16, 1982, passing out a year later on August 15, 1983. He came back to
Nigeria to serve after completing his doctorate in law at Harvard University
(FORN) in December 1981.
Aisha Abubakar, the minister of state
trade and industry, returned to Nigeria after concluding her masters in
development studies at the University of Leeds. Her certificate is marked
NYSC/LA/FRN/91/18170, indicating that she served in Lagos, after graduating
from a foreign university.
Khadija Bukar Ibrahim, the
minister of state foreign affairs, also schooled abroad. She attended
Roehampton Institute for Higher Education, affiliated with the University of
Surrey and finished in 1989. She enlisted in the NYSC on October 2, 1990 and
passed out on October 1, 1991. Her certificate is marked NYSC/LA/FRN/90/28750,
indicating that she served in Lagos (LA) after graduating from a foreign
university (FRN) in 1990.
However, Mr. Atunwa’s
certificate, rather than bear FRN or FORN (code for foreign graduates) has KWP
(a code reserved for graduates of Kwara State Polytechnic) as identification
mark. But the politician did not graduate from Kwara Polytechnic. He claimed he
attended the University of East London for the first degree and the University of
London for his master’s.
“This is the most audacious
forgery since investigations into NYSC claims of senior government officials
and politicians began,” Liborous Oshoma, a Lagos-based legal practitioner said.
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| WAEC Result |
Mr Oshoma said Mr Atunwa appeared to have broken Nigerian law twice.
“Based on Section 13 (c) of the
NYSC Act, even being in possession of a forged NYSC certificate is already a
crime,” Mr Oshoma said. “And then we now have an affidavit that he swore to and
walked himself into perjury, another criminal offence.”
Mr Oshoma said Mr Atunwa’s case
was more unfortunate for Nigeria.
“You could say Kemi Adeosun did
not know some people gave her fake document, and Mr Shittu was being exuberant,
but this particular case is very troubling,” the lawyer said. “He knew of those
recent cases and still went on to do it.
“This is amongst the consequences
of the president’s failure to act on time or act at all on the already
uncovered cases. Since the former finance minister was able to escape from the
country without prosecution and the communications minister remains in office
despite being found not to be qualified for the job, this man could easily
dismiss any legal ramifications of his action,” he added.
“Since it has now come to the
fore that if you graduated before 30, either from a Nigerian university or
abroad, you know you do not qualify for exemption and you must serve and if you
forge your document you would be exposed, I would have expected that all those
who schooled abroad would start investigating whether the NYSC document they
were given was genuine or not. There is no hiding place anymore.”
MR ATUNWA, PDP RESPOND
But when contacted on the matter,
Atunwa said he did not submit any fake document.
“I am fully compliant with all the
legal requirements to be elected to the office of the governor of Kwara state.
I did not submit any unsupported NYSC certificate as suggested by you,” he
said.
“I strongly advise that you
verify each and every assertion you wish to make. You may wish to make formal
enquiries/verifications of all institutions concerned.
“You should also be circumspect
enough to authenticate the provenance of any document you may be handed if it’s
not from a formal and official source. An organisation such as yours should not
fall short of the required legal and ethical standards.”
He added, “I did not submit any
unsupported NYSC certificate as suggested by you.
He also told one of reporters by
telephone that he broke no law because he did not submit any fake document to
the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). He declined to explain
why he failed to participate in the mandatory national service scheme.
This newspaper’s investigation
did not show he submitted the document to INEC and our question to him was not
along that line. We only said he submitted the document to the PDP.
However, the lawmaker, party
insiders say, has triggered a scheme to replace the documents he submitted to
the PDP, and withdraw the fake NYSC certificate.
“He is now planning to claim that
secondary school certificate is his highest academic qualification and that he
did not need to serve,” one source said.
The PDP, when contacted, said it
was not aware of the forgery.
“I am not aware of this,”
spokesperson Kola Ologbondiyan said of the problematic document Mr Atunwa presented
to the party . “Please give me time to find out.”
A GODFATHER’S FAVOURITE
For several months leading up to
the PDP primaries in late September, Mr Atunwa was not considered a favourite
for the Kwara PDP governorship slot.
The race was largely seen as a
battle among Shaba Lafiagi, a serving senator; Bolaji Abdullahi, a former
sports minister; Abubakar Suleiman, a former national planning minister; and
Ali Ahmad, the current speaker of the state Assembly.
Only Messrs Atunwa and Lafiagi
remained in the race when the primaries held on October 1 in Ilorin, and the
House member defeated the senator by 4,555 to 577 votes. Other candidates
withdrew from the race in protest, insinuating that Senate President Saraki
imposed Mr Atunwa on the party.
A RAGING EPIDEMIC
After the publication of Ms
Adeosun’s scandal, there are suggestions by some Nigerians online that many
Nigerians who schooled abroad did not return home to serve, but instead opted
for either forged exemption or discharge certificates to clinch employments and
appointments in Nigeria.
Although the investigation was
published in early July, Ms Adeosun did not resign until mid-September, after
the pressure from Nigerians home and away became too much for the Buhari
administration to bear, and as a competitive general election was looming.
Rather than being arrested for
forgery and prosecuted by federal authorities, Ms Adeosun was allowed to
quietly depart Nigeria a day after he resignation, a development for which
President Muhammadu Buhari was fiercely knocked by critics, who used it to
ridicule his anti-corruption claims.
Mr Shittu, the communications
minister who was in the race for the All Progressives Congress’ governorship
ticket in Oyo State, was disqualified from the race by the ruling party after
another investigation showing that he evaded youth service upon graduation from
the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University.
While the ruling APC found Mr
Shittu’s position for office untenable, Mr Buhari continued to keep him in
office, more than a month after the scandal broke.
While Ms Adeosun said she did not
know her certificate was forged, Mr Shittu said he deliberately avoided service
because he assumed he had done a greater service to the nation when he was
elected to state parliament immediately after graduating.
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