Nigerian Federal Road Safety Officials Arrested For Forging Abuja University Certificates For Promotion

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Edwin Onyuwe and Achigili Ogoli, two officials of the Federal Road Safety Corps, have been arrested by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission over certificate forgery.

SaharaReporters reports that the two FRSC officials forged the certificates of the University of Abuja through a syndicate and presented the same documents to earn promotion before they were nabbed.

The commission also arrested two members of a certificate forgery syndicate, Mr. Sunday Okpara and Abdulrahman Razak, for forging the certificate of the university for the two officials of FRSC.

According to the ICPC in a release on Friday, the arrest of the duo in Abuja followed a petition by the Corps Marshal, Dr. Boboye Oyeyemi, to the Commission, in which he alleged that the two officials had approached the management of FRSC with forged Bachelor of Science degrees in Public Administration, from the University of Abuja, to be upgraded to officer cadre.

The commission said, “The two officials were alleged to have also presented fake statements of result from the same institution to the management of FRSC for the same purpose of upgrading to officer cadre.

“Before their arrest by ICPC, the Corps had contacted the University of Abuja to ascertain the authenticity of the certificates. The school wrote a reply to FRSC confirming that the degree certificates were forged.

“Yet, Onyuwe and Ogoli, maintained that they were originals approved by the university, having allegedly paid N500,000 bribe to a staff member of the university to falsify records in order to back their claim.

“ICPC, in the course of investigation, found that the two FRSC officials were students of the Distance Learning programme of the university. However, they could not graduate due to poor results, as documents from the university showed they had multiple carry-overs in the courses registered.

“This allegedly made them to approach the forgery syndicate to prepare the forged degree certificates for them to present to their organisation for upgrade of their cadre.

“The amount of N430,000 was found to have been paid to the syndicate for the forgery, with Onyuwe paying N230,000 while Ogoli paid N200,000 respectively.”

The commission said the matter would be charged to court upon the conclusion of investigation.