Oyo dismisses 662 workers for certificate forgery

Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State

The Oyo State Government on Tuesday said 662 civil servants had been dismissed from the state public service for forging the West African Examination Council’s certificates.

The state government added that 2,021 fictitious names of workers and pensioners had been removed from its payroll.

The state Head of Service, Mr. Soji Eniade, made the disclosure while briefing the press on the decisions made at the State Executive Council meeting which was held on Monday.

Also at the briefing were the state Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Mr. Toye Arulogun, and the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Dr. Bashir Olanrewaju.

Eniade said about 684 workers were not found at their duty posts during the last physical verification in the state.

He explained that the state government was restructuring the state public service by ascertaining the quality and quantity of the workforce.

Giving a breakdown of the number of ghostworkers in the state, Eniade said there were 1,432 fictitious pensioners’ names, 84 fictitious local governments’ pensioners and 505 fictitious workers in the state civil and public service.

The HoS said they were uncovered during the verification whereby the Bank Verification Number was used to determine the accurate size of the state workforce and pensioners.

He said, “The state government discovered that 662 personnel on its payroll were in possession of forged WAEC certificates which were discovered during the certificate verification handled by Messrs Captain Consulting. Three hundred and five of the personnel were from the local government councils, 152 from various ministries, 149 from the Teaching Service Commission, 28 from parastatals and two from the state Universal Basic Education Board.

“There were 670 workers that were discovered to have submitted forged certificates, eight out of them re-submitted their WAEC certificates for re-verification while the remaining 662 had been summarily dismissed and the onus is now on them to prove that the WAEC certificates in their possession are original.”

Eniade further explained that the exercise was a continuous one as the consultant was expected to extend the verification to the higher institution’s certificates submitted by the state civil and public servants.

He urged workers with fake certificates to voluntarily resign as the government would come after them.

“The level of decadence in the system is embarrassing and this cannot continue. What the government is doing is called self-check. There is financial check, institutional check, quality check and so on. Any organisation or even individual that wants to progress must engage in self-check as standard practice.”

Punch