Fake certificates: 800 Ogun teachers know fate on Monday

The fate of the no fewer than 800 teachers in Ogun State alleged to have engaged in irregularities, particularly possession of forged certificates to gain employment will be determined on Monday.
Submission of the final report of the series of verification exercises carried out by the state government to identify unqualified and unscrupulous teachers in its public schools will on that day be made by CITC, a firm of consultants recruited for carry out the exercise.
An alarming number of teachers have been discovered to not only possess fake certificates but also engaged in various irregularities with which they were offered jobs in the public schools throughout the 20 local government areas of the state.
The exercise, which the state Commissioner for Education, Barrister Segun Odubela, said is in line with the government’s commitment to a “truly affordable qualitative education,” started in September and is aimed at tackling what appears to be an age-old problem that affects the future of an estimated 450,000 students in its public schools.
A total of 223 teachers failed to show up for the screening process, even as some hurriedly resigned.
Also, cases of 21 birth certificate forgeries were detected just as a case of a teacher who gave four differing dates of birth, including one that showed that he would have commenced primary school four years before his birth were discovered.
Already, a total of 527 teachers have been identified as having engaged in shady practices and officials at the State Universal Basic Education Board say there are indications that the figure will rise to about 800 by the time the consultants saddled with the responsibility of identifying the number of qualified teachers in the public schools submits its report.
A source at SUBEB disclosed that “of the 19,146 teachers on agency’s payroll, only 69 per cent during the screening exercise have so far able been able to immediately prove their eligibility to teach.
“The remaining 31 per cent could not be confirmed.
“The latter category had presented statements of results and or letters of attestation, some of which were clear forgeries.
“These worrying statistics, which were unearthed during an exercise which was initially expected to be just for two weeks across only 10 locations in the state had caused the state government to commission a secondary review, which entailed contacting the institutions directly to confirm those who had indeed graduated as claimed.”
The review, which is being rounded up at the Abeokuta Grammar School caused the consultants to directly contact over 62 universities and colleges as far as Gombe, Ilorin, Abuja and Kaduna to confirm the validity of attestation letters and statements of results presented by the teachers, the source said, adding that “in one case, a list of 620 purported graduates from a singly institution resulted in just 484 confirmations.
“This means that 136 teachers had presented dubious documents.
“Some were listed as ‘not known’ at the institutions whose letters of attestation they had submitted were identified as forgeries.
“There is the case of a teacher who admitted amid tears, that in desperation, she paid N30,000 to secure a forged certificate.”
He said many of the teachers with suspicious documents, “knowing that their game is up, did not present themselves for the secondary screening.
“Some have stopped attending their respective schools for fear of arrest whilst others have already resigned.”
Odubela, in an interview, said the exercise is “about quality assurance of our human capital.
“All our investments to provide affordable quality education will only yield result if we have well qualified and motivated teachers in our classrooms.”
The Chairman of SUBEB, Alhaji Mufutau Ajibola, said the exercise will add impetus to the concerted efforts by the state government to rebuild the decayed education sector.
Comrade Sam Idowu, the state chairman of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) said the union is in support the government’s effort to sanitise the teaching profession, describing those who did not turn up for the screening as those who have been giving the profession a bad name.