BY PATRICK MGBODO
A sweeping crackdown on fraud currently ongoing in the Delta State Civil Service has forced hundreds of civil servants into ‘premature’ retirement after a massive fraud involving age falsification and certificate forgery was uncovered, The Pointer has gathered.
The physical verification/certificate screening for all staff of the state public service, initiated at the behest of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, is aimed at sanitising the system, promoting efficiency and productivity, and ensuring that every penny of public funds is judiciously spent, according to the Chairman of the Delta State Civil Service Commission, Lady [Chief] Roseline Amioku.
The Pointer reliably reports that those currently affected in the ongoing purge are mostly senior civil servants on Salary Grade Levels 15 and 17, including directors and permanent secretaries, whose ages were deliberately falsified and official records heavily compromised in a bid to unlawfully extend their years of service.
In a circular dated April 22, 2025 and signed by the Permanent Secretary in the Delta State Civil Service Commission, Mr Fred Yoro, designated officers were directed to appear before the verification committee with their letter of first appointment, letter of confirmation, latter of last promotion, birth certificate/affidavit of age declaration, Local Government Area Identification Letter, First School Leaving Certificate/Primary Six Master List, West Africa Senior School Certificate, Degree and National Youth Service Corps [NYSC] Certificates.
Reacting to the development, Lady Amioku, who is also the chairman of the verification committee, said, ‘’As I speak to you, we have seen a lot of fake certificates, and we will verify all the certificates that they [civil servants] have photocopied for us. And by the grace of God, will remove those found culpable from the system.’’
Further revealing discrepancies in the ongoing exercise, Lady Amioku said the verification committee has been able to fish out people who are impersonating. ‘’For example, a woman was caught working with her daughter’s certificate and answering the daughter’s name and age while the government was paying her salary. You will be shocked at what we have uncovered. Some of them are unbelievable if you hear them’’ she said.
At the civil service commission’s office in Asaba, The Pointer witnessed several officers lamenting that their service years were abruptly abridged. For instance, our reporter earwigged a woman, who just faced the panel, claiming that while she still had 12 years before retirement, she would have to exit the service in five years.
Responding to such claims, Lady Amioku said, ‘’How can you say you finished secondary school at the 11? Is that possible? And then how can you claim to have finished university at 15? How? Some of them claim they finished primary school at seven; that means they started primary school at two or three years. This is not possible. These are the problems we are having.
‘’We are just pitying them. If not, some of them are supposed to be handed over to the police or dismissed straight away. But to make it easy for them, we just ask them to swear an affidavit admitting that the ages they presented are not correct and declare their real ages. Otherwise, we will remove them from the payroll and in that case, they will be dismissed. All these are because they do not want to retire.
Lady Amioku narrated how an anonymous permanent secretary in one of the government agencies, who is on a consolidated salary was still scheming for elongated service. ‘’That is what they are crucifying me for; that I asked them to retire. I do not have any regrets’’ she said, adding that the manual process of verification has helped the committee to hold officers directly accountable since they [officers] input the data in their files with their handwriting.
She advised civil servants to be civil in everything they do. ‘’As civil servants, you must carry your heads high. You must represent the state well anywhere you find yourself. If you are a government staff member, know it and don’t misbehave. As for removing things from your file, this is very wrong and you must stop it. When we talk about discipline in the system, it begins with you. You have to discipline yourself first. What will you tell your children if you are doing the wrong things? I advise them [civil servants] to behave as the name implies: civil.
‘’In this verification exercise, we have seen a lot. We have asked some of them to go and swear affidavits, and they resist us. Then we ask for proof, and they go as far as bringing baptismal cards, especially if they are Catholics’’ Lady Amioku said, even as she recalled an incidence where an officer approached her with a forged baptismal card. ‘’These are the kind of things we are seeing here. It is not easy at all.’’
To shed more light on the issue, the second member of the state civil service commission and a retired permanent secretary, Chief [Dr] Akpufuoma Pemu, explained ‘’In some cases, we ask for marriage certificates for the simple reason that when we are in doubt with the age being quoted, we get wary. It is a pity to say, but sometimes, people are economical with the truth, and because our business is serious, we always want to be sure as much as possible. We give everyone a level playing field to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. That is actually where the manipulations come in.
‘’You can imagine, we saw someone who claimed to have finished primary school at eight years, left secondary school at 11 years and graduated from the university 15 years ago. Such an officer had the effrontery to present a birth declaration to that effect, and he or she is on Level 17.
‘’We had another case of a lawyer who claimed to have left primary school at six years old. That means he started schooling right in his mother’s womb. We have had some that are very befuddling. People will come and tell you that because their parents were teachers, headmasters, they left primary school at seven years old.
‘’Most importantly, I must commend the sagacity, the courage and political will that has been displayed by Governor Oborevwori for being able to confront this quagmire that has been in the system. The truth be told, hitherto, we get people who blow whistles on this fraud, but there is not much that we can do about it because we do not have evidence. But since the Governor constituted this committee, the officers now have to provide us with evidence of their age.
‘’But even at that, it is difficult to fish for evidence from a man who told you he left the university in 1985 at 15 years when we know that the minimum age to enter a university in Nigeria is 16 years. So, a committee like this allows the government to interrogate such persons. At the end of the day, we retired such a fellow without prejudice.
‘’We did simple arithmetic. Let’s say he is 16, which is the minimum age to enter the university. He studied for four years, and by that time he was 20. He did his youth service, and that makes him 21 years old. In that case, all we simply did was subtract 15 from 21, and it gave us six. When we removed six from 1970 [claimed year of birth], it gave us his near-actual year of birth: 1964. You can imagine such a grown man parading an affidavit of 1970.’’ Chief Pemu said, adding that since the exercise commenced on April 28, 2025, the Governor has not interfered, ‘’This speaks a lot of the Governor’s integrity’’
On how civil servants doctor their ages, Chief Pemu presumed, ‘’Some persons who wish that some documents in their files change get across to some other persons who have access to those files and change them’’ Even this morning alone [Wednesday], I have seen up to 10 different ages of the same person in the same file. In the civil service, we have what is called a Confidential File and the PE file, which is like the everyday file. The confidential file is what you fill by yourself when you enter the service.
‘’Somebody appeared before me and was claiming 1972, but he didn’t know that I had seen his confidential file, and he was born in 1966. I proved it to him and he admitted it. He is a very big boy in the civil service, and so I asked him to go and do the right thing. He is on level 17. He is crashing from 1972 to his actual 1966.
‘’There was another one who said he was born in 1968, but in the older part of the file, he already wrote 1966. Another one filled 1961 and then changed it to 1964. Terrible. The rot we have been seeing is amazing. We do not want to cast aspersions on anybody, but I can tell you that at the end of this exercise, the proverbial saying that ‘’Rome wasn’t built in a day’’ would have been achieved.
‘’We also found out that people forge their First School Leaving Certificates. It is that bad. Old people forge their Primary Six certificates to give a semblance of a younger age, but unfortunately for some of them, we can detect the fakes, and it is easy. Imagine, someone brought one certificate and on the top of it was written ‘’Bendel State Government’’ but in the body of the certificate was written ‘’Delta State’’.
‘’Another fellow brought a certificate issued by the Ondo State Government in 1963, and Ondo State was not in existence in 1963. This is just a scratch of the various things we are seeing. Mostly, it has been age adjustments and certificate forgery. At the end of the exercise, we will write to the institutions [schools] whether they issued such certificates or not, especially where we suspect foul play.
But what about the credibility of the committee itself and the integrity of its members? ‘’Of the 12 members in the committee, the chairman and I are politicians, the rest represent various Ministries, Departments and Agencies [MDAs]. The chairman insisted that we screen the other 10 members who are civil servants first. This is to give the committee credibility to preside over the verification exercise. After that, we started with the permanent secretaries and then moved on to levels’’ Chief Pemu said. He continued, ‘’For now, I know that over a hundred [civil servants] have been retired. Then, more than 500 people have had their ages adjusted accordingly.’’
On why civil servants manipulate their ages, Chief Pemu opined, ‘’As people rise in the service, things become more comfortable for them; the ambience, the prestige and all of that. As a psychiatrist who has read some psychology, I see it as a need to maintain that status; you go to your village and boost that you are this and that in the civil service. Of course, we cannot ignore the pecuniary side of it. And then, there is the fear of the unknown.’’
He advised civil servants to always remember that once they join the service that they are going to retire someday. ‘’As you get the job, also start planning for your exit, and the simplest way to do that is to join a cooperative society’’ he said, adding that civil servants should be modest in their lifestyle so that they can cope in retirement as ‘’everything that has a manufacturing date must have an expiry date’’
Addressing our correspondent at a press conference in Asaba, the Commissioner for Works [Rural roads] and Public Information, Mr Charles Aniagwu, said the screening process is to ensure order. ‘’If there are individuals who may have tinkered with their age, this screening exercise will expose them. This screening exercise will also expose ‘ghost workers’ and help us have a clean workers’ register so that we can make decisions based on knowledge.
‘’Before now, you will see a junior brother in the civil service who is older than the senior brother. So, the screening exercise enables us to deal with all those things, and we can ensure that those who are working are those supposed to be in the system’’ the state’s spokesman said.
Like other respondents, the Executive Director of Projects [EDP] at the Delta State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission [DESOPADEC], Olorogun [Dr] Ebenezer Okorodudu, who spoke to The Pointer, said the physical verification exercise further demonstrates the integrity of Governor Sheriff Oborevwori.
‘’One of the challenges we have in our society today is a lack of productivity. Most organisations are overstaffed. It is not limited only to Delta State. When you call for a promotion interview, you see more than a thousand people coming from everywhere, but those doing the work are not more than one hundred people. This is quite appalling. We have a system where people are entitled to a promotion every three years, even when they do not go to work. Some staff have risen to level 16, but they cannot provide proof of their productivity.
‘’Productivity is the most important thing for growth. So, if the Governor is doing this verification exercise, he is in order. This requires a lot of courage to do what he is doing. For you to be an effective leader, you must have the courage to make an impact. Why should you want to falsify your age? At 70, you still claim to be 65. This is an offence against humanity and God. By doing so, you are depriving the younger generation of the opportunity to be engaged in service. Falsifying certificates is a criminal offence and must not be tolerated. We must give Governor Oborevwori kudos for his courage, dedication to public service’’ Okorodudu said.
Meanwhile, the Delta State Chairman of the Trade Union Congress [TUC], Comrade Martin Bolum said the employer, in this the Delta State Government, has the right to confirm the strength of its workforce, adding that the controversies surrounding age falsification in public service has been a burning issue over the years.
Bolum, who is also the chairman of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria [ASCSN] in the state, said the age verification exercise ‘’is not a union matter,’’ even as he reiterated the commitment of labour to protecting the welfare of workers in the state.
However, a civil servant who spoke with The Pointer on the sidelines of the verification exercise, Mr Augustine Eni, hoped that the exercise was better organised. He suggested that the commission should adopt digital methods, ‘’and not just using the paper files’’.
As the screening exercise continues, extending to other levels of the civil service, it should not be misconstrued as a witch-hunt. Rather, it is a commendable effort by the state government to sanitise the system, promote transparency, enhance productivity, and ensure that taxpayers’ funds are judiciously utilised. Importantly, it also opens the door for the next generation of civil servants to contribute meaningfully to public service. Officers who aid in the manipulation of official records must desist from such unethical practices, as they, too, may soon come under scrutiny. The time to uphold integrity and accountability in the system is now.
