Ondo 2024: Alleged Certificate Forgery By Governor Aiyedatiwa; New Facts Emerges.
…says, those who wish to further verify the truths should contact the authority of WAEC to authenticate or deny the certificate being paraded by Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa or go to a competent court to challenge the Governor.
Following the ongoing brouhaha surrounding the Ondo State Governor, Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa’s certificate forgery scandal ahead of the governorship primary election of the All Progressive Congress in Ondo state, which will come up in a few weeks to come, a political analyst and social commentator from Ondo State, SAMAD Orijeminiyi has cleared the air and made some revelations.
In his recent post on Facebook, Mr SAMAD Orijeminiyi said, “I am of the opinion that due diligence should be the hallmark of responsible journalism. But these days that all manner of bloggers comfortably refer to themselves as journalists, stories don’t often add up. I am compelled to speak on the growing allegation of certificate forgery against Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa Orimisan because his critics have shown to be too lazy to speak to verifiable facts. They all get carried away by merely comparing the date on his waec certificate (1982) to the date the school he attended was established (1980), then querying how it was possible for him to finish secondary school in two years.
“I do know that no system is constant. And as a matter of fact, a lot of changes keep happening in every system, including our education system too. Sometimes these changes could be national and some other times, especially with particular reference to primary and secondary education, they are peculiar to different states.
“I wrote my first UME (University Matriculation Examination) in 2005, and unfortunately, the idea of Post-UME was introduced the same year. Thus, rather than going to check for admission status when JAMB released results as it was the case in the previous years, candidates had to go through another exam set by their choice schools to determine their qualification for admissions. I wrote PCE too, known at that time as Polytechnic and Colleges of Education Examination but today, the exams have been unified such that students don’t have to register separately for UME and PCE. If these changes had occurred at state levels as in the case of secondary education, it is possible that people from other states would misrepresent facts, arguing based on what they know or what happens in their own states. More worrisome is that a lot of young people who argue about Governor Aiyedatiwa’s certificate of 1982 had not been born at that time and they never lived in Lagos or got familiar with the changes in the Lagos State educational system.
“Succinctly, at the time Alhaji Lateef Jakande became Governor of Lagos State in 1979, the population of Lagos had started growing fast that number of students had overwhelmed available infrastructure. Primary and secondary schools in Lagos State resorted to shifting system, in which case some students would go to school in the morning while others would go to the same school in the afternoon after the first set had closed. This constituted some sort of worry for Governor Jakande and he decided to tackle the problem head on by building more schools to accommodate the growing population, and by extension, encourage school enrollments.
“It is on record that within a space of four years, Jakande surprisingly built 207 new primary schools and 118 new secondary schools. Hence, he abolished the shifting system by relocating students from schools that were over-populated to the new ones. And of course, every child transferred to a new school retained their current class. They did not all have to start afresh. An example of this can be found in a publication authored by Christianah T. Alabi to celebrate the achievements of Alhaji Lateef Jakande after his demise in February 2021. The article was published in DailyTrust Newspapers of Sunday March 2, 2021, titled “The Miracle Jakande Performed to Educate Downtrodden Children” wherein Mr. Abdulazeez, one of the pupils lined up in a parade to honour the Governor while on inspection tour of schools in 1982 confirmed that he was transferred in primary five to Oduduwa Primary School, Ladipo Street, Mushin, and there he wrote his first school leaving certificate examination. In which case, he wrote the FSLC Exam one year after the school was founded. The same way it happened to many students of that period.
“With the above, it should be clear to everyone while Mr. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa who was transferred to Ikosi High School, Ikosi Ketu, when the school was founded in 1980, wrote WAEC in 1982—two years later. It is also instructive to note that pupils and students in Lagos State wrote exams under the names of their new schools established by the State Government after transfers. And as confirmed by the report of the investigation by the NPF, Aiyedatiwa’s Centre No. was 15592 and Candidate’s Exam No. was 019.
“Ordinarily, Methinks it’s only the maker of a document that can say whether its document has been forged or not. Thus, rather than disipating unnecessary energies and causing distractions in our body-politics, those who wish to further verify the truths should contact the authority of WAEC to authenticate or deny the certificate being paraded by Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa or go to a competent court to challenge the Governor. Whoever that is not ready to do any of these is only playing to the gallery. A terrible politics at that.
