Kwara to audit civil servants’ certificates

The Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, has said the state government will authenticate academic certificates of the state civil servants.
He also said the planned audit of workers in the state would assist in stamping out certificate racketeering.
The governor spoke during a meeting with heads and bursars of the state-owned tertiary institutions on Tuesday in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.
He also said no form of blackmail and misinformation would deter his administration from implementing measures that would boost the Internally Generated Revenue of the state.

He stated that the government would continue to meet its obligations to the people and survive the current economic downturn by raising its IGR.
According to him, while it is common for some people to resist change, the best interest of the people must prevail at all times.
It will be recalled that the government’s directive to tertiary institutions to open single revenue accounts with designated banks in a pilot scheme was greeted with speculations, saying that it was planning to hand the management of the institutions to its holding company, Harmony Holdings Limited.
The governor called on the people to ignore such rumours.
He stated that the newly-established Kwara State Internal Revenue Service remained the only body authorised by law to collect and manage all state and local governments revenues.
He reassured the people that the single revenue accounts would ensure transparency and budgeting, as government would have a better idea of the revenue coming into the coffers of the affected agencies and therefore support them, where necessary.
He called on the heads of tertiary institutions to embrace the single revenue account as the new scheme would be a litmus test of their managerial ability.
Ahmed said that under the new scheme, any revenue transaction outside the single revenue account would be regarded as fraudulent and those found culpable would be punished accordingly.