The Oyo State Government has disclosed that it has summarily dismissed 662
workers from the state civil and public service for forged West Africa
Secondary School Certificates (WASSCE), saying that about 2,021 fictitious
names of workers and pensioners have been expunged from the its payroll.

The state Head of Service (HOS), Mr. Soji Eniade made these disclosures
during the press briefing about the decisions of the Executive Council
meeting held on Monday at the governor’s office Ibadan.

Eniade, who was accompanied at the press briefing by the Commissioner for
Information, Culture and Tourism, Mr. Toye Arulogun as well as the
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Bashir Olanrewaju, while giving a
situation report on the on-going reform in the state civil and public
service stated that about 684 workers were not found at their duty posts
during the last Physical verification Exercise (PVE) carried out in the
state recently.

The HOS explained that the state government is restructuring the state
civil and public service by ascertaining the quality and quantity of the
workforce, stressing that the Bank Verification Number (BVN) used to
determine the accurate size of the workforce and pensioners exposed that
there were 1,432 fictitious state pensioners’ names, 84 fictitious local
government pensioners and 505 fictitious workers in the state civil and
public service, amounting to 2021.

He added that the state government discovered that 662 personnel on its
payroll were in possession of forged WASSCE certificates discovered during
the certificate verification handled by Messrs. Captain Consulting
consultant, highlighting that 305 of the personnel were from the local
government, 152 from ministries, 149 from Teaching Service Commission
(TESCOM), 28 from parastatals and two from the State Universal Basic
Education Board.

Eniade pointed out that 670 workers that were discovered to have submitted
forged certificates, 8 out of them resubmitted their WASSCE certificates
for re-verification while the remaining 662 had been summarily dismissed
and the onus is now on them to prove that the WASSCE certificates in their
possession are original.

The HOS said that the exercise is a continuous one as the consultant is
expected to extend the verification to higher institutions certificates
submitted by the state civil and public servants and consequently urged the
workers who are still in the service to voluntarily resign as the
government will deal with them within the ambit of the law.

He emphasized that the action of the government is not meant to witch-hunt
anybody, saying that what the government is doing is a standard periodic
self-check which is standard practice throughout the world where quality
service delivery is expected.

According to Eniade, “I am an advocate of some of the Private Sector
practices to be injected into the public and civil service in the state.
The level of decadence in the system is embarrassing and this cannot
continue. What the government is doing is called self-check. There is
financial check, institutional check, quality check et al. Any organization
or even individual that wants to progress must engage in self-check as
standard practice.

“The government engaged the services of a consultant and this is the same
consultant used by the previous administration. We do not want any
interference and that is why we have engaged a third party to weed out the
bad ones amongst us all. In 2013, workers with fake certificates were
dismissed and it is a continuous process which the government will see to
the end.

“We are using the exercise to determine the quality and the quantity, right
size, of the workforce for efficiency, prompt salary payment, and service
delivery to restore the lost glory of the public and civil service.
Initially, we had a total of 670 and 8 out of them have represented their
certificates. We will give them the opportunity of re-verification. We
believe in the saying that he who comes to equity, must come with clean
hands.

“Also, we have started issuing queries to the personnel that prepared the
payrolls where fictitious names were discovered. We want them to tell us
where they generated the names and explain why disciplinary actions should
not be taken against them,” the HOS added.

Eniade further noted that after the completion of the exercise, areas that
needed to be fortified will be fortified, redistribution will be done as
well as retraining to properly position the state workforce for present and
future challenges.