What happens in a country, any country, where uncertainty about the credentials of private individuals, but especially of public figures, bother on the ridiculous? There is no gainsaying that such a country is a country very much on the brink of a crisis.
Nigeria currently suffers from a credibility crisis. In what can only be fittingly described as a stunning installment of ‘ the more you look, the less you see’ phenomenon, many things have happened in Nigeria recently to resurrect the age-old debate over whether Nigeria is a country with a tarnished reputation.
Earlier this year, one Ejikeme Mmesoma,from Anambra State, gained instant fame for emerging as the best candidate in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination.
Cash and commendations steadily streamed towards her, until JAMB raised eyebrows with a damning declaration that the result in question did not issue from them.
The declaration Immediately clipped Mmesoma’s wings since news first broke. After a lot of back and forth, during which JAMB heroically stood its ground, Mmesoma backed down and admitted that she had forged the certificate. It was telling that it took so long and plenty of efforts to detect a theft perpetrated in an ordinary business center.
If Mmesoma’s case was the first time JAMB was mired in such an embarrassing tussle, there has long been strong suspicion that forgery is widespread in Nigeria.
Nigerians know that in the cauldron of survival that their country has become, there is hardly any document that cannot be forged or falsified.
Academic certificates, birth certificates, tax papers and every other kind of document has been forged in Nigeria to gain the most marginal of advantages.
Law enforcement has been too weak to detect and deter the epidemic. Through Nigeria’s yawning cracks, all kinds of values have fallen.
Among Nigerian politicians, forgery appears to have been refined into an art. It has well become a tradition during electoral disputes for parties to freely accuse each other of forgery. But it is not always the metaphor of a drowning man clutching at straws.
In 2019, days before his swearing in, David Lyon, who won the Governorship
Election, saw his victory invalidated by the Supreme Court which held that his running mate in the election, Degi Wangagra, submitted a fake certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
As the Nigerian Supreme Court prepares to deliver judgment in the petitions filed against the emergence of Bola Ahmed as president of the country, forgery has again flared into a contentious issue.
The saga has played out on foreign soil mostly on foreign soil with the Chicago State University disputing the authenticity of the diploma certificate President Tinubu is insisting came from it.
Anyone is looking for the roots of Nigeria’s credibility crisis, or just why it is so easy for other countries to distrust Nigerians, needs to look no further than incidents like this, or other instances during which Nigerians have attempted to pull the wool over the eyes of their fellow Nigerians or agents of other countries when they travel abroad.
But why is it that many Nigerians have neither compunction nor reservation about forging documents that can confer the slightest advantages on them? It is the nature of the country. Specifically, it is the way and manner corruption has become ingrained in the psyche of the country; the way it conducts business.
The business of forgery In Nigeria is a natural fallout of the grander business of corruption, which many public officers in Nigeria conduct with great grandeur.
In a bid to move ahead in a country where life is increasingly becoming a survival of the fittest, nothing is too reprehensible.
Nigeria must comb through the many cobwebs of deceit clouding the country. Forgery and the submission of fake certificates thrive under the darkness that a distinctive lack of transparency foists.
Resolving the problem of forgery in Nigeria is a hard task because there are a lot of cracks in the system through which many crimes crimes go undetected.
Law enforcement must be strengthened and tightened.
Nigeria has enough laws to nip this in the bud. Nigeria has to call on those laws sooner rather than later.
To do otherwise would be to allow fakes and frauds to proliferate all over the country.
Nigeria cannot afford that, especially in public office.
Ike Willie-Nwobu
