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Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari has appointed a new finance minister in acting capacity to replace Kemi Adeosun, the finance minister since 2015 that resigned Friday.
The new person in charge of the country’s finance ministry is Zainab Ahmed who had been a junior minister in the budget and planning ministry.
Adeosun, the former finance chief had since July been embroiled in forgery scandal in respect of her national youth service exemption certificate.
Fresh tertiary institution graduates in Nigeria that are not up to 30 years at the time of graduation mandatorily undergo a national service for one year, and the certificate for that service is a requisite for any public office service, therefore implying disqualification from holding public office for anyone that skipped it.
Adeosun who has a UK background said she graduated in UK and lived there all her life until when she was 34 and obtained a Nigerian passport and by implication citizenship for the first time and therefore needed to go through the mandatory youth service.
But according to her letter of resignation, when she applied for the service, she was asked instead to get an exemption letter since she was already above the minimum service age.
Adeosun noted that she mandated people she trusted as someone that wasn’t familiar with Nigeria to get her that.
In July, the media published a report that Kemi’s exemption certificate she tendered to qualify her for the public office was fake and forged.
The government she served in showed a lack lustre attitude to the matter and responded in silence possibly thinking time would gloss over it and things continue as usual as it had been with a lot of scandals involving the government and the officials in the past.
But the Adeosun forgery scam won’t let go as interested persons dug deeper and wrote the National Youth Service Corps office that later replied that it never got any application from Adeosun asking for exemption and did not also issue her such certificate.
In her resignation letter of September 14, she wrote that: “I have, today, become privy to the findings of the investigation into the allegation made in an online medium that the Certificate of Exemption from National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) that I had presented was not genuine. This has come as a shock to me and I believe that in line with this administration’s focus on integrity, I must do the honourable thing and resign.”
In response, the president acknowledged the resignation and announced a replacement almost immediately.
But like the silence from the government initially when the scandal broke, it never said a word on whether Adeosun would have any legal action against her as such admittance proves guilt and possible prosecution.
It is worthy of note that some ministers of the government in the past did more damning things that were overlooked, including the re-instatement of a fugitive of justice, Abdulrasheed Maina to civil service.
After a National Assembly probe, it was proven beyond doubt that the Attorney General of the Federation and Justice Minister, Abubakar Malami masterminded the plot that was proved illegal and till date the government has not taken any action against him.
Photo from Google Images
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