Saturday June 7, 2018 Premium Times made public its three month investigative report on how Nigeria’s minister of finance Mrs. Kemi Adeosun skipped the mandatory one year National Youth Service Corps. The report disclosed that she chose instead to forge an exemption certificate in the year 2009. The report which is already a matter of public discourse is not what interests me but the silence of the Honorable Minister.

By birth and upbringing the Minister is a UK citizen and we’d expect that she’d understand the severity of certain crimes.  In the United Kingdom, issues of forgery and perjury are serious crimes, many highly placed individuals have lost their positions due to a mere “accusation” that may end up being false but they never acted the way Kemi Adeosun is acting at the moment.

The silence of the Minister to say the least is highly disappointing as it shows the accusations are real and not unfounded. It is a known fact that when highly placed individuals like Kemi Adeosun is accused of such acts they react immediately to such accusations but at the moment the Minister is silent, and the federal government is silent.

Nigerians are busy stating opinions on the issue but the accused is silent. The Minister cannot continue to maintain silence on issues of this magnitude as it erodes her integrity. It is also disappointing that President Buhari that prides himself as a man of integrity has not requested for her resignation nor directed her to respond to the accusation. This ongoing scenario was what happened when a Presidential aide Barrister Okono-Obla was accused of forging his WAEC certificate it was the same silence.

This administration cannot continue to preach “change” while we still have the old way of doing things in our political and administrative process. The ongoing silence of Mrs. Adeosun is contempt. She needs to speak out!

tosin adesina