President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s latest administrative sweep—appointing 26 new officials across 10 federal agencies—was ostensibly designed to inject fresh energy into the machinery of governance.
Instead, it has reignited a deeply troubling narrative about the thoroughness, integrity, and underlying motivations of the administration’s vetting process.
While the official statement from the Presidency broadcasts these appointments as immediate steps toward national progress, a closer look at the composition of these boards reveals a glaring, deeply unsettling oversight that threatens to undermine public trust completely.
At the center of this gathering storm is the appointment of Lawrence Okoh from Edo State to the board of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission. In the official press release, Okah is prominently decorated with the prestigious title of “Engineer.”
However, inside sources and records paint a vastly different, deeply embarrassing picture. Lawrence Okah is not an engineer. There is no academic record, no professional certification, and no institutional footprint to suggest he ever attended an engineering faculty or qualified for the title.
This is not a minor clerical error or an innocent resume padding mishap; it represents a systematic failure at the highest level of government vetting, threatening to push an already skeptical public into absolute disillusionment.
The Nigerian public has barely recovered from the fallout of the Kemi Adeosun certificate scandal of the past, or the more recent administrative embarrassments where high-profile appointees were discovered to have fabricated or grossly exaggerated their credentials.
The “Adeyemi Saga” should have served as a definitive, institutional turning point—a red line indicating that the Presidency would no longer tolerate baseline deception or lazy background checks.
Yet, the inclusion of an unverified “Engineer” on a vital economic commission proves that the lessons of the past have been completely ignored.
The National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission is not a ceremonial resting place for political cronies; it is a highly technical, sensitive agency tasked with drawing up the financial frameworks, income policies, and productivity metrics of the federal civil service.
To place individuals with fabricated titles into these positions is an insult to the millions of highly qualified, genuinely certified Nigerian professionals who are systematically bypassed for political convenience.
If the state apparatus—with the Department of State Services (DSS), the police, and robust federal registries at its disposal—cannot verify whether a board nominee possesses a basic university degree, then the entire security screening process is either fundamentally broken or willfully compromised.