Finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, is not entitled to National Youth Service Corps’ Certificate of Exemption, and even if she had applied for one, the man who was in charge of the Corps in 2009 said there was no way he could have approved such request.
Maharazu Tsiga, who assumed office at the NYSC as director general in January 2009 made the disclosure in an interview with Premium Times, the Online Newspaper that broke the news of Adeosun’s certificate saga.
Tsiga, a retired Brigadier General replaced Bomoi, the man who purportedly signed Adeosun’s exemption certificate.
He added that there was no way he would have approved of it, nor would Bomoi return to issue it.
“There is no way that somebody would come and sign after hand over,” Tsiga said.
“In as much as you have not served, no matter how old you grow, in as much as you were not mobilised to serve at the time you were supposed to serve, they can never give you exemption. You must go for service.”
He further said faking NYSC certificate is not a new issue.
“As I told you, we have had fake corps members, even fake NSYC camp,” he said.
Tsiga said the scheme could identify the originality of the certificate from its “strong room”.
“We have what is called strong room. I believe from there they can easily identify if a certificate is issued by the NYSC or not,” he said.
Anthony Ani, a former director of mobilisation at NYSC, had in an interview with Channels Television on Wednesday dismissed Adeosun’s certificate as fake.
He stated that it is not proper to apply for exemption certificate from the scheme.
According to him, it is the corps that determines if a graduate would be exempted or undergo the one-year programme.
Adeosun has not responded to enquiries on the issue since the news broke last week.