Mrs Kemi Adeosun
Nigeria's Finance Minister
The publisher of the Premium Times, Dapo Olorunyomi, on Thursday, in Ilorin challenged the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun to go to Court on the story that she allegedly forged her youth service exception certificate.
Dapo insisted that the investigation the news medium conducted evidently shows that the exemption certificate the woman parades is a forged one. According to him, ”We didn’t just publish the story in question, it was a product indepth investigation, and we have it on good authority, that the certificate she’s parading is a forged one. We challenge her to go court, we will meet her there”.
Olorunyomi stressed that Premium Times carried out a thorough investigation before publishing the story, adding that the organisation would encourage Adeosun to go to court because that is the best way she could prove the story if she believes it is not true. “Adeosun forged her exception certificate. The story is real. We did a water-tight investigation that took us three months before we came out with the story.
We encourage her to go to court if she will like to prove us wrong,” he stressed Olorunyomi stated this when responding to a question from a member of the audience after he delivered a lecture entitled “Independent Journalism At The Interface Of The Digital Transition” at the University of Ilorin .
He delivered lecture at the 9th Annual lecture organised by the Mass Communication Department of the University in memory of Mr Doyin Mahmoud, the Pioneer Head of the department who died in 2009.
Mahmoud, a respectable media executive was a former Managing Director of the Independent Newspaper Limited, the publisher of Daily Independent.
Responding to another question on the anti-corruption war, the veteran journalist advised the government to strengthen all the agencies responsible for the campaign against corruption and encourage all stakeholders to be part of the campaign to make it more successful. Olorunyomi, while delivering his lecture pointed out importance of independent media to democracy saying “you really can’t have a healthy democracy without independent media.”
The journalist who noted that there is increasing financial crisis occasioned by such factors as drastic drop in circulation of newspapers, dwindling patronage in advertisement militating against independent journalism, advised that stakeholders must be proactive in addressing the problem to ensure independent media is maintained. He described Mahmoud under whom he said he worked, as a great and knowledgeable journalist who he said was always thirsty of ideas and knowledge and after improvement of individual journalists and the institution of journalism.
Also speaking, the Vice Chancellor of the University, Prof. Sulyman Abdulkareem expressed that legacies of Mahmoud were being celebrated by the Mass Communication Department and advised that people should do good to leave good legacy behind “We are all going to be was that people will be saying he was this he was that. Let is working hard to leave good was behind, ” he stated
In another development, a former Director-General of National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC) Maharazu Tsiga, has said he couldn’t have approved the request of Finance Minister, Kemi Adeosun, for an exemption certificate.
Tsiga was Director-General of the NYSC at the time the minister claimed to have applied for the certificate in 2009. This is even as the Publisher of the Premium Times, the online portal that broke the story, Dapo Olorunyomi, yesterday, in Ilorin challenged Adeosun to go to court on the story that she allegedly forged her youth service exception certificate.
Kemi Adeosun In a telephone interview with online portal, Premium Times, Tsiga, a retired general, further provided clues that further reinforced positions of NYSC’s serving and retired personnel, including a retired director of mobilisation, Anthony Ani, all pointing to the invalidity of the said ‘certificate’.
He repeated the point earlier made by Mr Ani that verifying any certificate claimed to be from the NYSC was an easy task. “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. On whether anybody who graduated below the age of 30 but applied later to the NYSC for exemption could be exempted, Tsiga said “it is not possible.’’ He said even if one had reached 100 years, one would still have to serve, saying: ‘’In as much as you have not served, no matter how old you are, 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.’’ Speaking in a Channels Television programme, Sunrise, on Wednesday, former Director of Mobilisation at the agency, Anthony Ani, had said there was no way a director-general who left the system in January could have signed a September certificate, among others. “I don’t know where the certificate comes from but (what) I say is that NYSC cannot make that mistake. The NYSC that I served, that I know, can never make that type of mistake,” Ani said
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