The ethical void in public service was underlined in Cross River State with its decision not to sack the 758 teachers with fake certificates discovered recently by its State Universal Basic Education Board. The Chairman of SUBEB, Stephen Odey, barefacedly said that, instead of doing the needful, the dishonest teachers would only be demoted.
The absurdity was fittingly headlined thus: “Head teacher demoted to gateman, security man becomes teacher,” in one of the national newspapers. The supposed headmaster on salary grade level 13 was demoted to a grade level 04 worker.
Government’s decision to allow fraudsters, quacks and un-certificated teachers to unleash their ignorance or intellectual vacuity on the pupils guarantees a future ruined. It does not provide any solid foundation for education in the state. This scandal, this unkindest cut of the state on the young ones that embody its future, is, therefore, avoidable. Odey explained: “If we sack all the teachers with fake certificates, the crime rate in the state will increase and also the governor of the state believes that there should be food on the table of everyone in the state.” This is most irrational.
In public office, there is a limit to political expediency. The state should sack the cheats and prosecute them. By so doing, the state would have instilled discipline in its civil service and uprooted the vice, drawing afflatus from Section 468 of the Criminal Code, which provides imprisonment for forgery. No doubt, the Cross River SUBEB certificate scandal is not the first of such silliness in the country. The evil phenomenon has pervaded virtually every government agency: police, military, universities, medical profession, federal and state civil services, legal profession and the political class.
In Abia State, 1,642 persons with dubious certificates were detected in the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs alone, during a recent staff verification audit. Imagine what the outcome would have been if such a check had been conducted in all the state’s ministries. According to Charles Ogbonnanya, the commissioner in the ministry, the West African Examinations Council confirmed the certificates as fake. Again, instead of the matter being handled in tandem with the country’s penal code, interest groups are spitting fire, threatening the commissioner as they attempt to shield the felons.
The evil becomes scarier or more perilous with untrained hands getting fake licences to practise medicine. Some have been in this charade unnoticed for as long as a decade, removing fibroids, carrying out appendectomy and delivering women of babies through Caesarean sections. This was the case with one Victor Akpan, who practised for 10 years in Abuja at his “surgery and maternity hospital.”
In Ogun State, the Director of Hospital Services, Sola Adebiyi, confirmed in March that the authorities had arrested the sixth fake medical doctor. And from the most unlikely of places –Federal Ministry of Health – one of such felons worked with a stolen medical degree for nine years, just as a university in the North-Central zone harboured a phoney lecturer for 12 years.
However, Plateau and Oyo states did what Cross River and Abia states are afraid of doing. In July 2014, the Plateau State Government dismissed 1,400 teachers with forged certificates after verification, said the chairperson of its SUBEB, Lyop Mang. No fewer than 662 similar felons were laid off in the civil service of Oyo State, 149 of them from the Teaching Service Commission. Nevertheless, by shying away from a penal clampdown on those involved, their public services are not free from same vulnerability.
In politics, the farce has been felt for long. However, it claimed its biggest scalp in 1999 when Salisu Buhari lost his exalted position as Speaker of the House of Representatives because of his “Toronto certificate.” Regrettably, generations of politicians since then have learnt nothing from that episode. This is evident in the fact that some lawmakers in both chambers of the National Assembly are presently mired in certificate scandals. One of them is standing trial for allegedly forging a diploma certificate. It is for this reason that the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmoud Yakubu, told stakeholders last month in Abuja that it is a monstrosity the electoral process is bugged with, which political parties should tackle by not fielding such candidates. We urge all government agencies to undertake a broad sweep of these depraved minds, just as Tanzania did last month, which resulted in 9,900 workers being fished out and fired.
Essentially, this is a symptom of a dysfunctional society, a crisis that raises questions about our ethical values. Societal moral ethos gets no better if the state exhibits timidity and restraint in fighting vices that destroy hard work and promote the easy life. This aloofness should stop. The perpetrators should be taken for what they are – common felons. Organisations can be veritable agents of anti-forgery of certificates if, as a habit, they certify the authenticity of credentials prospective employees present before them.
Ultimately, the culture of charging suspects to court should be non-negotiable. That is the only way those involved will begin to get the message that dishonesty is not a way of life, and it does not pay, as it is in Abu Dhabi, where anybody who fakes a certificate to get a job faces up to 10 years in jail.
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