[OP-ED] Mr. President, fake academic certificates are choking Kenya’s economy and job market

Posted by Jambo 

Dear Mr President, Kenyans are appealing your intervention! We are about to sink!  We are about to die! Mr President, you may have heard (in Kenya) of fake doctors, fake preachers, fake policemen, ghost workers and fake money too. Indeed, the recent discovery of a fake policeman who rose through the ranks in the Administration Police to the position of superintendent before the on-going vetting smoked him out is a confirmation of a painful reality of ‘fakeness.’

Mr President, the world of fakeness is real in your country and its eating your Kenyan citizenry with urgency. This trend is seriously worrying and it’s igniting a national debate of the extent to which people present fake academic and professional certificates and get plump jobs under the disguise of this evil practices.  Even we’ve heard of University lecturers who have fake certificates and are leading institutions of learning!

This is a mutating cancer and soon, it will lead this country into abyss/the lake of fire! The proliferation of fake academic and professional certificates in your government is wanting and need to be addressed with urgency. While ordering this, qualification audit to all civil servants in Kenya, we also request that you extend your executive order to every organization, institutions, company and/or entity in Kenya to conduct a thorough qualification audit of their employees and present an audited academic and professional qualification to your able office for action. Needless to say, this is also a trend we have seen even in private companies, religious institutions and non-governmental organizations. Banks and financial institutions are not spared either. Vetting of all civil servants and all working individuals in Kenya must be done.

Fake certificates are also presented by those seeking to join institutions of higher learning for admission even without meeting the minimum requisite qualifications for admissions. This is where the Commission for University Education (CUE) ought to purge their knife instead of their irresponsible audit of campuses that is surrounded by corruption from their end.

We know of institutions of higher learning in Kenya where students are being admitted without presenting their original certificates and CUE is still approving these instructions to continue while demanding other genuine institutions to close. CUE need to be disbanded. Evil things are being perpetrated by the commission for university education in Kenya. Corruption is ripe at CUE and this may go unnoticed but we must tell them that Kenyans scholars are watching!

Mr President, kindly order a crackdown of ‘fakeness’ in Kenya. Unfortunately, our faith in your government is fading-reason-it is still under your government where this evil of fake certificates and professional qualifications thrives. Please do something urgently rest we all die into the lake of fire!

Dr. Njenga, Solomon

Chair – Governance, Peace and Security Studies

Africa Nazarene University, Kenya

-Adapted from The Standard