The Oyo State Government has disclosed that it has summarily dismissed 662 workers from the state civil and public service for forged West Africa Secondary School Certificates (WASSCE), saying that about 2,021 fictitious names of workers and pensioners have been expunged from the its payroll.
State Head of Service (HOS), Soji Eniade made these disclosures during a press briefing about the decisions of the executive council meeting held on Monday at the governor’s office Ibadan.
Mr Eniade, who was accompanied at the press briefing by the Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Toye Arulogun, as well as the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Bashir Olanrewaju, while giving a situation report on the ongoing reform in the state civil and public service stated that about 684 workers were not found at their duty posts during the last physical verification exercise (PVE) carried out in the state recently.
The HOS explained that the government is restructuring the state civil and public service by ascertaining the quality and quantity of the workforce, stressing that the bank verification number (BVN) used to determine the accurate size of the workforce and pensioners exposed that there were 1,432 fictitious state pensioners’ names, 84 fictitious local government pensioners and 505 fictitious workers in the state civil and public service, amounting to 2021.
He added that the state government discovered that 662 personnel on its payroll were in possession of forged WASSCE certificates discovered during the certificate verification handled by Messrs. Captain Consulting consultant, highlighting that 305 of the personnel were from the local government, 152 from ministries, 149 from Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM), 28 from parastatals and two from the State Universal Basic Education Board.
Eniade pointed out that 670 workers that were discovered to have submitted forged certificates, 8 out of them resubmitted their WASSCE certificates for re-verification while the remaining 662 had been summarily dismissed and the onus is now on them to prove that the WASSCE certificates in their possession are original.
The HOS said that the exercise is a continuous one as the consultant is expected to extend the verification to higher institutions certificates submitted by the state civil and public servants and consequently urged the workers who are still in the service to voluntarily resign as the government will deal with them within the ambit of the law.
He emphasized that the action of the government is not meant to witch-hunt anybody, saying that what the government is doing is a standard periodic self-check which is standard practice throughout the world where quality service delivery is expected.
