Following the resignation of Kemi Adeosun as Minister of Finance, sources close to the Presidency say she may face prosecution over forgery.
Adeosun, this newspaper learnt, was asked by the Presidency to turn in her resignation letter on Thursday.
The former finance minister has been enmeshed in a scandal after an online newspaper, reported that the minister forged an exemption certificate of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Details of the grimy story indicate that the person purported to have signed the exemption certificate in September 2009 had already retired from service by January of the same year.
The NYSC law stipulates that, “with effect from 1 August 1985, a person shall not be called upon to serve in the service corps if, at the date of his graduation he is over the age of thirty (30), or he has served in the armed forces of the Federation or the Nigeria Police Force for a period of more than nine months, or he is member of staff of any of the Nigerian Security Organisations, the State Security Service, the National Intelligence Agency, the Defence Intelligence Agency or has been conferred with any National Honour.”
It states further that any person who “forges or uses or lends to or allows to be used other than in the manner provided by this Act by any other person any certificate issued pursuant to the provisions of this Act; or makes, or has in his possession any document so closely resembling any certificate so issued as to be calculated to deceive, is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine of N5,000 or to imprisonment for a term of three years or to both such fine and imprisonment.”
Since the scandal broke in July, there have been pressure on Adeosun to resign and for the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to prove that there are no sacred cows in the fight against corruption.
Sources say the Presidency may have bowed to pressure to relieve the minister of her appointment and prosecute her for the crime she allegedly committed.
Recall, President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday accepted the resignation of Kemi Adeosun as minister of finance. The President also approved that Zainab Ahmed, the minister of state for budget and national planning, should oversee the ministry.
Similarly, a pro-democracy and non-governmental organisation, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, on Friday called for the prosecution of the former minister for forgery.
HURIWA made the call while dismissing Adeosun’s resignation over certificate scam as an “insufficient remedy for her alleged indiscretion.”
In a statement by the National Coordinator Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and the National Media Affairs Director Miss Zainab Yusuf, the organization also urged the National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) to immediately drag her to court so she would be “sanctioned if found culpable or for the Attorney General of the Federation to do it himself or grant a fiat to a private entity to prosecute her over alleged forgery.”
HURIWA also expressed shock that President Buhari “still keeps his senior Special Assistant on public prosecution Mr. Obono Obla despite his indictment for parading fake WAEC certificate as attested to before the National Assembly by the hierarchy of the West African Examination Council (WAEC).”
The group said the slow action of the “President in showing the way out or tolerating persons with alleged questionable credentials has absolutely destroyed any claim of his government waging war against corruption because a government cannot claim to go to equity with tainted and soiled hands.”
According to HURIWA, “We are of the considered opinion that the Federal Ministry of Justice or the NYSC must institute a legal proceeding against the Minister of Finance since the NYSC has ruled that the exemption certificate could not have come from them.
“Her resignation is neither sufficient nor has it paid for the severity of the alleged crime.”