The Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission on Friday afternoon in Abuja stormed the National Identification Management Commission and arrested 41 officials for allegedly presenting fake credentials during a promotion exercise.
Luck ran out on them when they applied for upgrading and presented additional qualifications they claimed to have acquired.
Preliminary vetting carried out by NIMC, through the Federal Ministry of Education, indicated that some of the tertiary institutions contacted to verify their certificates, confirmed the certificates to be fake, altered or that the owners were not their graduates.
One of the suspects presented a certificate which was “doctored” to indicate Second Class degree rather than the earned Third Class degree.
Others presented forged certificates whereas they still had pending carry-overs.
Preliminary investigations by ICPC indicate that some of the certificates emanated from some of the illegal degree awarding mills and Outreach Centres recently sealed by the ICPC.
The Commission is further probing the complicity of those involved in the graduation of one of the suspects, with a degree in Engineering from an approved university.
The owner of the certificate could not express himself in writing.
The ICPC has strongly advised tertiary institutions yet to respond to the earlier inquiries sent to them by the Federal Ministry of Education to do so immediately.
The arrest and interrogation of the NIMC officials is coming in the wake of ICPC/Nigerian Universities Commission crack-down on illegal degree awarding mills nationwide.
The ICPC Chairman, Ekpo Nta, had at several public presentations promised to sanitise the public sector and commended the NIMC Management for its zero tolerance for corruption in its workforce, given the sensitive national assignment it is charged with.
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