Scandal Confirms Humongous Corruption Under Buhari’s Watch, Says PDP
By ‘Dotun Akintomide
Chairman, Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, (CACOL), Debo Adeniran has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack Finance Minister, Mrs Kemi Adeosun once the allegation of certificate forgery against her has been investigated and established.
“It will be morally wrong even for President Buhari to retain her in service while fighting corruption,” Adeniran told The New Diplomat while reacting to a Premium Times report where Adeosun was reported to have fraudulently obtained the National Youth Service Corps exemption certificate she has been parading since 2009.
The report had chronicled how the Finance Minister, upon her graduation from the Polytechnic of East London, at 22 in 1989, failed to participate in the one year national service by NYSC, which is mandatory for all Nigerian graduates.
She was also said to have forged her NYSC certificate of exemption usually issued to graduates who have reached the age of 30 to enable her work in public service.
According to CACOL’s Adeniran, the allegation of forgery and breach in requirement for employment in Nigeria against Adeosun should be thoroughly investigated by all the anti-corruption agencies in the country to properly establish her culpability, saying she should be made to face the music.
“If it’s true that she forged the certificate, we urge the anti corruption agencies and other relevant agencies to carry out investigations including the code of conduct bureau and if she’s found culpable she should face the music squarely. It doesn’t matter how influential or how powerful she may be.
“As soon as the allegation is proven, we will demand that she resign.
“If she is being confronted with unassailable evidence and found guilty, then she has no option than to resign. Because it will be morally wrong even for President Buhari to retain her in service while fighting corruption.
“Anybody that gets to power through corrupt means will want to sustain his or herself with corruption and will not be able to work with completely honest people. It’s those who will help her cover up corrupt practices that she will want to work with,” Adeniran said.
Similarly, while demanding for the immediate arrest and prosecution of Adeosun, the PDP in a statement issued Saturday by the National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said the Minister’s NYSC certificate scandal was a vindication of its position that the Buhari government is not as upright as it wants Nigerians and other citizens of the world to believe.
“The world can now see how the Buhari Presidency has been concealing sharp practices under it. We can now see why there is humongous corruption under President Buhari’s watch and why Mr. President has refused to take any concrete steps to check the sleazes in his administrations.Perhaps such ‘artful dodgers’ were deliberately hired and placed in revenue related agencies to perfect the pilfering of our common patrimony for interests in the Buhari Presidency.
“The PDP challenges President Buhari to prove himself a man of integrity by allowing an open system-wide and independent inquest into all alleged corrupt practices in his presidency. We challenge President Buhari to be bold to allow an open independent inquest into the exact figures amounting to the trillions of naira oil revenue earned by the nation in the last three years and how he had spent same with Mrs. Adeosun as minister of finance.
“Mr. President should also allow an open inquest into his handling, with Mrs Adeosun, of all our depleted foreign financial instruments, including the Excess Crude Account (ECA), from which funds were taken without recourse to the National Assembly.
“President Buhari should also allow an inquest into his administration’s borrowing of over N10 trillion in 30 months, with Mrs. Adeosun as minister of finance and the purposes for which the money was used.
“We challenge President Buhari to allow an inquest into the leaked memo at the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) showing N9 trillion corrupt oil contracts as well as the alleged stealing of N1.1 trillion worth of crude oil, all in a sector under his direct purview as Minister of Petroleum,” the statement read even as the party challenged the Presidency to open “an investigation into the N18 billion Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) intervention fund and the N10 billion National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) alleged to have been stolen from the Treasury Single Account (TSA) by APC officials and Presidency cabal.”
Adeosun had earlier served as a Commissioner for Finance in Ogun State between 2011 and 2015 before getting her current job as the Minister of Finance under President Muhammadu Buhari.
