The National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) has reacted to the exclusive story published by Primum Times detailing how finance minister, Kemi Adeosun, skipped the mandatory national service and used a forged certificate to cover for it.

The NYSC has requested for more time before they gave official response.

Details published by Primum Times on Monday show that the certificate is among the set of documents submitted by the minister for her appointment and screening in 2015.

Speaking for the first time since the news broke, NYSC’s Director of Public Relations, Adenike Adeyemi, said the service is working towards responding to PREMIUM TIMES’s request for verification of Mrs Adeosun’s certificate.

This newspaper first wrote to the NYSC on April 16, 2018 requesting for the verification. After weeks of silence and promises, the paper’s editors decided to re-channel the request into a Freedom of Information request.

This followed disappointment suffered by journalists working on the story when the formal letter that was to be issued on June 1 by the corps was suddenly withheld.

Primum Times reporter who was at the NYSC headquarters on Thursday, May 31, was told to come back the next day to pick up the organisation’s response to our letter, following scrutiny that afternoon that confirmed that “Folakemi Adeosun” was not in the register.

However, on arriving on Friday, June 1 to pick the response, a new decision was announced: the NYSC officials said the verification has been channelled to the organisation’s ICT unit to check its “electronic database.”

Details later..