Group urges Buhari to probe Perm Sec over alleged age falsification

Group urges Buhari to probe Perm Sec over alleged age falsification

The Coalition of Civil Society Groups for Justice, CCSGJ, has called on the President Muhammadu Buhari to investigate the Permanent Secretary of the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Sunday Edet Akpan, over alleged falsification of age.

The convener of the group, Ibrahim Kabiru Dallah, in a statement signed on Friday, said that Mr Akpan, is being accused of parading “questionable academic credentials and falsified his age of birth”.

According to the group, Mr Akpan’s Primary and Secondary School certificates are said to be missing from his records, stressing that the document are either non-existence or are declared missing to hide a falsified date of birth.

“Mr. Akpan joined the civil service in Akwa-Ibom State where record is said to show that his original Date of Birth is 1958.

“He transferred his service to Federal Government in 1999 with the same record of Date of Birth.

“However, in his IPPIS, he entered his Date of Birth as 1962. This is a deliberate criminal falsification to help him overstay in service,” the statement read in part.

“For the avoidance of doubt, without certificates to authenticate, Mr. Akpan is said to claim that he started his education at Qua IboeScience Secondary School (Etinan Institute) in 1965.

“The first and most serious of the wonders of the world is how someone born in 1962 can start Secondary School in 1965. The implication is that he went from Primary School to Junior Secondary before he was ever conceived.

“And assuming without conceding that it was Primary Education he meant that he started in that 1965, it means that he began his Primary School Education at the record age of 3 years. That too should have made an entry in the Guinness Book of Records!,” the statement noted.

The group recalled that sometimes last year, another group, Concerned Public Servants, had made similar allegations against Mr Akpan, stressing that the Perm Sec had never denied their claims.

Mr Dallah, however, alleged that the Perm Sec was being shielded by some powerful forces “to stay beyond his due retirement age and escape the punishment of the law against all known Civil Service Acts and Standard Practices”.

The group said: “Two (2) related facts stand out. One, if Mr. Akpan was born in 1958, he ought to have retired 2 years ago.

“Two, if he was born in 1962, it was practically impossible that he started Primary (or even in some arguments, Secondary Education) in 1965.”

The group, therefore, urged President Buhari, who they described as an apostle of anti-corruption, to investigate and prosecute Mr Akpan, stressing that if found guilty, he should be imprisoned “so as to serve as a deterrent to other offenders and would-be offenders”.

By PRNigeria