Ogun teacher wins US visa lottery, replaces herself with her daughter

An ongoing verification exercise in the Ogun State  Teaching Service has opened a can of worms, writes ADEOLA BALOGUN

There are strong indications that the fate of about 800 Ogun State teachers is hanging in the balance, going by the current audit in the state.

A total of 19,146 teachers’ records are being vetted in the screening and accreditation exercise, which began last September.

Some teachers may however be lucky to return home having lost their means of livelihood if found wanting, but others may not be so lucky, because they may end up in jail for various acts of forgery and cheating.

Documents obtained by Saturday PUNCH from the exercise showed among others, a bizarre case involving a former teacher, who won the US lottery and relocated to the United States.

But, rather than informing her employers about the development, she instituted a regime of cheating in her family. She recruited one of her daughters to replace her, regardless of her educational status.

Unfortunately for her, her daughter was caught when the verification exercise commenced: she could neither present any certificate nor mention any higher institution that she had attended.

Instead, the young lady wept profusely and pleaded for leniency. She confessed, explaining that it was a plot to sustain the family while her mother was away.

Saturday PUNCH found that this scenario is a reflection of many other cases of teachers, who have been drawing undeserved salaries for years and compounding the problem of their pupils.

In another case, 620 teachers claimed that they had graduated from the same institution (name withheld), but it turned out that only 484 were certified to have studied there. The remaining 136 had only tried to deceive the audit team by presenting forged documents.

In a rare show of desperation to retain her job, one of the teachers reportedly confessed to have paid N30,000 to procure her forged certificate. 

To start with, the teachers were asked to present their credentials and other academic records for biometric documentation. About 223 of them boycotted the directive for fear of being exposed, while some absconded midway. Originally, the exercise was meant to last for just two weeks, according to the state Universal Basic Education Board officials.

But with the unearthing of disturbing revelations, the state government decided to employ the services of a consulting company, Corporate Institutions Training Consult, to confirm the various higher institutions attended by its teachers.

Overall, about 62 universities and colleges were contacted to confirm the validity of attestation letters and statements of results presented by the teachers.

According to a SUBEB official, some of the teachers, who claimed to have graduated as far back as 1978 presented statements of results and attestation documents in lieu of certificates.

“It was a harvest of absurdities of no mean measure,” says Yusuph Olaniyonu, the state commissioner for information.

The consultants were said to have compiled the papers of the 19,146 teachers in the state’s employment and forwarded same to the various schools that they claimed to have attended and graduated from.

In some of the documents obtained by Saturday PUNCH, out of the 35 names and documents sent to the Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education, Oto-Ijanikin, Lagos, for verification, the school wrote back that it could only confirm 25 to be authentic. It said others could not be traced and labelled them as fake.

Saturday PUNCH gathered that the authorities of Emmanuel Alayande College of Education, Oyo, were said so alarmed and invited the police when they discovered the number of forged results and certificates of the school presented by some of Ogun State teachers.    

Giving a background to the exercise, which exposed a harvest of fraudulent practices in the state, Olaniyonu, a former editor, ThisDay on Sunday, told Saturday PUNCH that the exercise affected every worker in the state, government, including Governor Ibikunle Amosun.

“We started with a biometric data of every worker of Ogun State. We started first with the civil servants. The governor underwent the exercise despite being the number one worker in the state.

“The actual purpose of the exercise is for the state government to scientifically and physically determine how many people make up its workforce; their biometric data and to capture other details. After the biometric data of the civil service, it was decided that it would be reasonable to have the teaching personnel in the state detailed and verified to determine their suitability.

“But along the line, the state government decided to examine the suitability of its teaching employees, particularly with a view to taking education to the old era when Ogun State used to be number one in the country.

The commissioner said that the quest to upgrade the teaching personnel and its efforts to revive the educational standard in the state led to the current exercise, which eventually threw up the fraud being perpetrated by some of them.

“After the final results of the exercise from our consultants, we may have to hand over the file to the police to handle the criminal cases. Those involved cannot run because we have them captured; we have their addresses, their bank accounts and other documents.

“They may have to face the consequence of their fraud. When a teacher is fraudulent, you can imagine what such would impact on his pupil,” one of the top state officials told Saturday PUNCH.

But Olaniyonu said the state government would consider the next line of action after consulting all the stakeholders.