The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has confirmed that the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, applied for an exemption certificate.
Mrs Adeyemi Adenike, the NYSC Director of Press, said in a statement in Abuja on Monday, that the scheme would however, investigate the origin of the allegedly forged exemption certificate purportedly being used by the minister.
“Our attention has been drawn to the issue of the alleged forgery of an NYSC exemption certificate by the Honorable Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun.
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“Checking our records, Mrs Adeosun did apply for an exemption certificate. We shall investigate the origin of the purported exemption certificate in question,” Adenike said.
NAN reports that a media report published on July 7, which had gone viral, had claimed that the minister did not only fail to participate in the mandatory one year national youth service but procured a fake exemption certificate in 2009.
The year-long service, organised by the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC), is compulsory for all Nigerians who graduate from universities or equivalent institutions and are less than 30 years of age.
Premium Times report had claimed that Mrs Adeosun did not undergo the one-year mandatory scheme and allegedly forged her NYSC certificate.
An NYSC official told the online newspaper that, “This one is an Oluwole certificate,” a top official of the corps said after we showed him a copy of the document. “We did not issue it and we could not have issued it.”
Oluwole is a location in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos, where fraudsters possess an amazing dexterity in the act of forging all kinds of documents.
Several current and former officials of the scheme told this paper that the NYSC would never issue an exemption certificate to anyone who graduated before age 30 and did not fall into the categories of persons exempted by the corps’ enabling Act.
Mrs Adeosun’s ‘certificate’ is dated September 9, 2009, and was purportedly signed by Yusuf Bomoi, a former director-general of the corps.
Officials said Mr. Bomoi stepped down from the NYSC in January 2009, and could not have signed any certicate for the corps eight months after. The retired brigadier general passed on in September 2017.
