Two officials of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Edwin Onyuwe and Achigili Ogoli, have been arrested by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) over certificate forgery.

Two members of a certificate forgery syndicate, Sunday Okpara and Abdulrahman Razak were also arrested for forging the certificate of the University of Abuja for the two FRSC officials.

Their arrest in Abuja followed a petition by Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi, to the Commission, alleging that the duo had approached the FRSC with forged B.Sc. degrees in Public Administration and also presented fake statements of result from the university to be upgraded to officer cadre. Before their arrest, the corps had contacted the university to ascertain the authenticity of the certificates and the institution confirmed that the said certificates were forged.

The duo maintained that they were originals having allegedly paid N500, 000 bribe to a staff to falsify records to back their claim. ICPC, in the course of investigation, found that the two FRSC officials were students of the Distance Learning programme of the university, but could not graduate due to poor results, as documents from the university showed they had multiple carry-overs in the courses registered.

This made them approach the syndicate to prepare the forged certificates for them to present to their organisation for upgrade of their cadre. N430, 000 was paid to the syndicate for the forgery, with Onyuwe paying N230, 000 while Ogoli paid N200, 000.

Meanwhile, a member of the syndicate, Razak, who claimed to be a printer, told ICPC operatives that he used an original certificate from the university obtained from a friend to perfect the forgery. Other members of the syndicate include Matthias Ibitiye, Usman Danjuma and Uchenna Ifeonu.

The ICPC said the matter, which is part of the collaboration between ICPC and FRSC to weed out corruption from the Corps, would be charged to court upon the conclusion of its investigation.