Dennis Amachree, former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services, DSS, has given insight into why the Service cannot stop President Muhammadu Buhari from appointing people with questionable certificates as Ministers.
Amachree explained that the agency always point out those with certificate issues in its reports after carrying out a background checks on potential Ministers.
Featuring on Channels Television programme, Sunrise Daily, Amachree said after the agency’s screening and report, appointment of those with certificate scandal were at the discretion of what he termed “political principalities”.
According to Amachree: “Some of these things, certificate scandals are discovered. The SSS will not tell you this person ‘don’t take him, this person is fit, take him’. We do intelligence report and submit it to the President. And in the report, I am sure it will be included that this person’s certificate is not correct.
“And then of course, in taking a decision, they can overlook that certificate part of it and that is why sometimes you see situations where somebody’s certificate is faulty and he has to take a bow.
“There are two different kinds of screening that are being done by the SSS and by the legislators in the Senate. What the SSS does is to do a positive vetting. Positive vetting encompasses the background of the subject where we go in and find out which schools you attended, whether your certificates are correct. It is a normal thing. Companies do it to ensure that the certificate a person is presenting is not a ‘Toronto’ (fake) one.”
In 2018, former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, was involved in certificate scandal as she was accused of forging her National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, discharge certificate.
Similarly, the immediate past Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu had admitted that he never went for the compulsory NYSC programme despite graduating before the age of 30.
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