SOURCE: PREMUIM TIMES
While the Nigerian government has continued to be silent over the certificate forgery scandal of its finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, it has successfully prosecuted a civil servant for falsifying his ICAN certificate.
James Lebi-Ayodele, who worked at the Office of the Auditor General of the Federation, was convicted by an FCT High Court in Jabi in July and sentenced to two years in prison without an option of fine for forging the Institute of Chartered Accountant of Nigeria certificate.
According to a report in Vanguard, the judge, Yusuf Halilu, said the convict would have risen to the position of the Auditor General of the Federation with a forged certificate in the future if the forgery had not been detected.
The judge also ordered Mr Lebi-Ayodele to pay ₦100, 000 in restitution.
The conviction came days after PREMIUM TIMES exposed how Ms Adeosun skipped the mandatory one year National Youth Service Corps scheme and forged a certificate that fraudulently indicated she was exempted from participating.
The revelation trigerred widespread outrage from Nigerians, with the Human and Environmental Development Agenda, a nongovernmental organisation, petitioning the police inspector general demanding an investigation into the claims against the minister.
Last month, another nongovernmental organisation, the Social Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), sued the NYSC for its failure to disclose details of the certificate paraded by the minister.
The group had earlier made a freedom of information request to the NYSC which the agency ignored.
In August, Lai Mohammed, the information minister, said the appropriate agency was still investigating the allegations against Ms Adeosun and that the president would only act at the end of the probe.
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