Recently, the Ondo State government announced dismissal of 354 workers in different categories of the civil service, for using forged certificate. Panic gripped local government staff the other day in Anambra state when the state government announced plan to screen certificates of staff. More than 30% of certificates used for admission to tertiary institutions that don’t certify the authenticity form bodies like WAEC are fake in Nigeria.

The 2007 Annual Examination Ethics Report claims that a total of N107billion was lost to examination malpractices in the last five years, also, value of revenue accruing to perpetrators of examination fraud rose to N25billion in the same year. Good business you will say in a country where the quest for material wealth is almost everything and malpractice in whatever form is being perpetuated and enshrined form the top.

Suffice to say that everything around us in Nigeria is a forgery. We have a forged nation being presided over by a forged president forced on the country through election malpractice similar to the examination malpractice replicated in our schools.

Everything we do in the country is meant do be hinged on the “due process” policy. Yet, the shaky foundation is built on malpractice and forgery. The admission to tertiary institutions is floored with malpractices and forgery. Our employment to all public and most private agencies is messed up by “ima mmadu” – nepotism. Fearing to fail, we threw away merit and hard work.

If one lets fear take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains. So the PDP fears it will fail woefully in free and fair elections that they forge a chain of massive rigging and intimidation – “Do or die affair”. Similarly, our kids fail to study for exams and became afraid they will fail. They resort to “Special Centers” and private schools where examination malpractices are effectively planned and executed with guaranteed success.

Afraid that the electorate will not give us a second thought, we forge certificates and become PhD holders. Our unemployed follow suit by forging certificates to get a job and the students forge results to gain admission. If the electorates still have doubt, entice and intimidate them with your ill gotten wealth. Our kids replicate that in schools by enticing and intimidation admission officials with huge sum of money that they jump at it some out of greed.

We capitalize on the level of poverty and greed from the electorate and public officials respectively to bribe our ways and rig elections. The students and the unemployed do the same at their own level. We repeat this over the years and it becomes a norm and tradition. Winner takes it all. Losers turn to cowards and outcasts. The heart of the nation continues to bleed.

We live forged lives. We claim to be the giant of Africa. We fake the war against corruption. We fake the reform of the Nigerian Police Force and the educational sector. We fake road construction and reconstruction in the nation. We fake the Turn Around Maintenance in our refineries. We fake the privatization of public owned companies and national monuments. We forge the census figures. We forge certificates to get job, gain employment and elective positions.

We fake everything.  

We fake characters; OBJ as the messiah we have been waiting for to save the nation; “Big Brother Africa” that sends troops to restore peace in the continent; EFCC as the only hope to the fight against corruption; “due process” and “transparency” as the mess goes on underground.

The handwriting on the wall may as well be a forgery. That is, if Yar’Adua is not what we think, sorry, what we want to believe he is… then the forgery will be complete.

Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. We didn’t inherit corruption neither did we inherit election rigging from our forefathers or colonial masters.  We didn’t inherit refineries that are redundant. We didn’t inherit leaders that are chained and surrounded by greedy sycophants. We didn’t inherit a country where every sane, energetic and promising young man has abandoned or planning to abandon motherland.

To stop this forgery and examination malpractice, all forms of malpractices, forgery and deceit being perpetuated by all tiers of government officials MUST stop. No more bribery at the high courts to get an affidavit. No more bribery at the public offices to get files moved or document signed. We have to stop elevating bandits and sycophants as role models in our society. We have to stop the present quota system and scrap the Federal Character Commission.

We have to start conducting election and stop the selection. We have to start promoting merit and not mediocrity.  We have to start questioning the integrity and level of judiciousness of elected public officials and when found wanting should be prosecuted. No sacred goad – EFCC take note.

My people say that he who is afraid to be called a coward, carry fire and water in the same mouth. We have to start spiting out fire – real fire. Fire that will burn and consume all our present iniquities and man made travails namely; election and examination malpractices, forgery for employment, admission and seeking elective position,  bribery, corruption, embezzlement, abuse of rule of law, …

Ka Chineke gozie okwu – May God see us through in all these we have said.