I waited one whole month to write this article – in hope and expectation that Professor Kila would by now have gathered and presented his qualifications following the widely shared claim of fakery of same by Premium Times. A month is surely a long enough time to do that. While I am not in a position to have made a definitive statement or taken a position one way or another on this matter, I am riding on the Premium Times allegedly extensive investigations and the professor’s accompanying unusual silence to pen this opinion. Professor Kila does like to talk. And this is one matter about which he is unlikely to choose silence. But he is silent.
So, how could a person have gotten away with wild claims of degrees, including a PhD and professorship which, apparently, he did not have? The answer is the UK. Pure and simple. Come with me.
I am a British citizen of Nigerian origin. I studied, worked and lived in Britain for an unbroken 20 years. And I reached the zenith of my chosen profession in that country (my second country) by virtue of my fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) UK. This is my 21st year as a fellow. And mine is a fellowship granted by a chartered body following completion of a professional qualification and mandatory years working in relevant senior capacities. This last statement is necessary because there are too many cheap professional fellowships here in Nigeria. I have been offered enough of them on LinkedIn – which I do not need. As it happens, I do not believe in fellowships of professional bodies that do not have chartered status. And who needs a non-chartered fellowship when you are chartered?
So, how does the UK make it easy for the professor or anyone for that matter – to lay claims to qualifications that he does not possess? The answer is simple. The UK of my generation did not ask for evidence of qualifications. Anthony Kila was of the same generation as me in the UK. What you write on the form is what is believed – Oyinbos only care that you are good on the job. I state it here without fear of contradiction that not once in my 20-year career in the UK was I asked to produce evidence of my qualifications. Yet, I referenced all my qualifications in all the jobs I held. And I worked in some of the best establishments that Britain has to offer – including the Housing Corporation and City of London Corporation where I spent five years as head of a national programme funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). City of London Corporation is where the Guildhall is based. Guildhall is one of the venues where visiting heads of state or government are usually hosted for dinner with the prime minister, Queen or King in attendance. The relevance of this is that, even as high profile as that organisation and venue was (is), we still got away with senior positions there without any serious, rigorous checks of the qualifications we claimed.
I was of the 1980s generation in the UK; people opened bank accounts in those days without the need to present any IDs. Whatever name you gave was your name. And driving licence did not have a photograph. Effectively, 10 people could be using that one driving licence as you did not by law have to have your driving licence on you while driving. If needed, you were told to produce it at any police station of your choice. You only needed to be able to sign the signature on it – a piece of cake.
There were particular reasons why someone, somewhere should have asked for evidence of my many qualifications – especially those allegedly obtained from Nigeria. Not once did anyone ask. By implication, I could have walked into an institution of higher learning and told them I had degrees which I did not possess; I would have gotten away with it if I was good on the job. This is how easy it was in the UK of my time to get away with fake qualifications – and many did. You wouldn’t even need to fake those certificates. No one was ever interested in seeing them. No one in England ever saw original or photocopies of my qualifications.
Now consider this and be flabbergasted: An Iranian lady by the name Zholia Alemi practised as a psychiatrist in the UK for 22 years without ever qualifying as a doctor. This was between 1995 and 2018 (this story is available online). She merely claimed to be a qualified foreign psychiatrist, and no one bothered to check this claim. How was she found out? She forged the Will of an elderly lady patient to her personal, criminal advantage and got found out. It was in the course of jailing her for this crime that an investigative journalist (curious that a doctor could do this) researched her and found that she was not even a qualified doctor. In the end, it was the personal effort of a journalist that outed her, not the system. This is how easy it was in those days. The ability to speak very good EnJames Godsonemented by a slightly mixed accent (that’s Anthony Kila and me) makes the fakery to be easily believable in Nigeria. My good friend, James Godson of Igbo origin, had the best accent among us. James is right up there in property development.
Is there an Anthony Kila in me as I was part of the generation easy in the UK? It was not needed.
My First Class Honours degree is real and verifiable
My scholarship is real and verifiable
My Master’s degree is real and verifiable
My PGD is real and verifiable
My Professional Qualification is real and verifiable
My Fellowship is real and verifiable.
My career in the UK and Nigeria is verifiable.
And I acquired a decent dose of Islamic education in Britain too.
Aside putting in the hard work which Allah blessed, Baba Onimoto and Iya Onigari (my unlettered parents of the most blessed memory) did a wonderful job of raising the four of us. “Nojimu, ranti omo eni tiwonse” was their slogan.
I left the UK a very long time ago and things may have changed, but anyone could claim to be anything he wanted in my days and get away with it. It was that easy.
Who do you think deserves the best award for fakery between the psychiatrist and professor? Be the judge.
