Oladimeji Ramon
The anti-corruption group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, has sued the National Youth Service Corps and its Director-General, Brig. Gen. Sule Kazaure, for the agency’s failure to respond to the agency’s that the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, forged an NYSC Exemption Certificate.
In a lawsuit, marked FHC/L/CS/1369/18, filed before the Federal High Court in Lagos, SERAP is seeking an order of mandamus against the NYSC and its DG.
The group is urging the court to declare that Kazaure and the NYSC’s failure to provide information and relevant documents on Adeosun’s true status was unlawful and amounted to a breach of the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2011.
The group is praying the court to compel the NYSC to immediately supply it with “specific documents and information on Mrs Kemi Adeosun’s application for the National Youth Service Corps’ Exemption Certificate and to publish widely, including on a dedicated and on the NYSC website, any such information.”
The suit followed allegation that Adeosun, who studied abroad, failed to observe the mandatory one-year national youth service and resorted to forging an NYSC Exemption Certificate to secure her current job and previous ones upon returning to Nigeria.
SERAP had last week given the NYSC a seven-day ultimatum to clear the air on the allegation, which has been in the public domain for about a month without a word from the minister herself.
In the suit filed through its lawyer, Ms Bamisope Adeyanju, SERAP contended that “suspicions of obtaining an unauthorised certificate involving a senior member of the government if not urgently and satisfactorily addressed would weaken public trust in the government’s oft-expressed commitment to transparency and accountability.”
It said, “By the combined provisions of sections 104(1) of the Evidence Act, 2011 and sections 14(2)(b) 14(3) and 19(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, the NYSC, being the public institution in charge of issuing exemption certificates from the compulsory NYSC programme, and having publicly declared that Mrs Adeosun applied for exemption, has a duty to provide SERAP with details and documents containing the application for exemption and the exemption certificate itself, if it was granted.”
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