The lessons from Kemi Adeosun’s resignation

President Muhammadu Buhari, last week, after hours of speculation, accepted the resignation of theBukola Mrs Kemi Adeosun, who until then was the Minister of Finance.
The President thanked the ex-minister for her services to the nation and wished her well in her future pursuits.
Mrs Adeosun resigned after she discovered that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate she holds was anything but genuine.
In her letter to the President, Mrs.
Adeosun said: “With the guidance and assistance of those, I thought were trusted associates, NYSC were approached for documentary proof of status.
Having never worked in NYSC, visited the premises, been neither privy to nor familiar with their operations, I had no reason to suspect that the certificate was anything but genuine…” However, while the minister is now gone, it must be pointed out that if truly we are desirous of building institutions to check and prevent another occurrence of the Adeosun saga, the energy we expended in the attempt to send her packing is, to say the least, misplaced, diversionary and unhelpful.
No doubt, we forgot the fact that beyond the legal and moral need to sack the exminister was the important challenge of building virile and strong institutions.
Truth is that most of the institutions are not effective and efficient.
In the case of Adeosun, we tended to forget that the NYSC acknowledged accepting request from Adeosun for her exemption from the mandatory one year service.
Yet, the same NYSC, after some years, said her certificate which was likely acquired with the connivance of some corrupt NYSC staff, is not genuine.
Again, another institution, the State Security Service (SSS) and the Senators that screened her for the ministerial position were unable to know that the NYSC certificate held by Adeosun was not genuine.
This shows laxity and incompetence on the part of these so-called institutions.
Thus, the issue is beyond the fake NYSC certificate that caused the downfall of a hardworking minister.
On the other hand, it could be a case of corruption, not incompetence on the part of these institutions.
It could be so mainly because the institutions, out of sheer corruption have built a system that looks the other way each time the rich man does anything wrong and quickly sends to jail the poor when he or she commits the same offence.
It is pertinent to state that the former minister also served under the administration of Governor Ibikunle Amosun in Ogun state.
Of course, she presented and got cleared to assume office using the same NYSC certificate that was used against her in Abuja.
No doubt, the institutions that cleared her in Ogun and Abuja are as guilty as Mrs.
Kemi Adeosun.
Therefore, what is helpful now for the nation, after the exit of Adeosun, is to seize the opportunity of the crisis that led to her resignation to demand for explanations from the NYSC, the SSS, Ogun State House of Assembly and, of course, the National Assembly.
Undoubtedly, the Adeosun saga has provided us, especially the Buhari-led administration which is out to correct the nation’s imperfections, with the opportunity thoroughly reform public service, put it on the right pedestal and prevent occurrences of future cases of certificate forgeries which appear to be on the rise.

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