80% Niger state education ministry staff with forged certificates – Panel

  Enyioha Opara, Minna     A committee set up by the Niger State Government to screen all categories of civil servants in the state has ...

 

Enyioha Opara, Minna

 

 A committee set up by the Niger State Government to screen all categories of civil servants in the state has discovered that 80 per cent of workers in the Ministry of Education used forged certificates.

 

The syndicate behind the printing of the fake certificates of the state College of Education, Minna, was said to have apprehended by the state police command.

 

The Chairman of the screening committee, Ibrahim Panti, who made this known in Minna, also disclosed that five members of staff of the institution (COE), , had been arrested by the police.

 

Panti said the suspected printer confessed to the crime during interrogation that he sold many of such fake certificates, which were used to secure employment in and outside the state.

 

“The screening has been so revealing that 80 per cent staff of the state Ministry of Education is not genuinely certificated.

 

“During the exercise, many of them could not even write their names or speak correct English.

 

“Most of them are teachers and one wonders the type of knowledge they have been imparting on the students,” the chairman lamented.

 

He, however, announced that all those involved had been sacked and would be replaced with those with genuine certificates.

 

Panti said members of the screening committee were being threatened by faceless people suspected to be some of the culprits.

 

He noted that members of the group would not be deterred in concluding the assignment given to them by the government.

Source