Why fake certificate holders get ministerial appointments — Ex-DSS director

A former assistant director of the Department of State Services,
Dennis Amachree, says the DSS has always informed the President
about ministerial nominees with fake certificates.

He, however, said some still scale through based on political
considerations.

Amachree said this during an interview on Channels Television’s
Sunrise Daily on Tuesday.

He was asked why some persons with fake certificates had gone on
to become ministers despite DSS screening and Senate grilling.

In his response, Amachree said the DSS had always investigated
the credentials of nominees and sent reports to the President but
it was left to the President and the Senate to finalise the
appointment.

He said, “Some of these things (fake certificates) are
discovered. The SSS will not tell you this person ‘don’t take him,
this person is fit, take him’. We do intelligence report and submit
it to the President. And in the report, I am sure it will be
included that this person’s certificate is not correct.

“And then of course, in taking a decision, they can overlook
that certificate part of it and that is why sometimes you see
situations where somebody’s certificate is faulty and he has to
take a bow.”

The former DSS official said the screening was similar to what
companies do to job seekers.

He said, “There are two different kinds of screening that are
being done by the SSS and by the legislators in the Senate. What
the SSS does is to do a positive vetting. Positive vetting
encompasses the background of the subject where we go in and find
out which schools you attended, whether your certificates are
correct. It is a normal thing. Companies do it to ensure that the
certificate a person is presenting is not a ‘Toronto’ one.”

The Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, had last year
resigned after it was discovered that her exemption certificate
purportedly issued by the National Youth Service Corps was
fake.

A former Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, also
admitted that he never did the NYSC programme which is compulsory
for everyone who graduated.

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