A Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-Araba, and a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Dr Charles Umeh, speaks with LARA ADEJORO on how to deal with forgery in the country

Is there any psychological issue with forgery?

Forgery could be age falsification or certificate falsification and that is why the personality of the individual comes to play.

Some people are pathological liars, so they might not have any qualms about lying but those who have a conscience always feel bad when they lie. So occasionally, they lie and if it gets back to them, they feel it. People lie for different reasons, and we have different degrees of a lie, but to me, a lie is a lie because it boils down to your integrity, self-esteem, and your inability to own up to your actions.

There are times people will be in difficulties and they feel lying is the way out, maybe they don’t do it very often and that is when it becomes a psychological issue for them if they are eventually found out. If you are dealing with a pathological liar, lying is second nature, so you can’t even know what the truth or lie is in their everyday conversation.

What could affect such situations is people’s reactions. If there is ageneral condemnation, the person might be traumatised, especially when you look at the age factor. For instance, if everybody starts to condemn a younger person, they start to be weighed down, traumatised, and if care is not taken, some of them may not recover from it unless they seek psychological intervention. Also, when things happen, the way you handle them determines their impact on you.

In the case of Mmesoma Ejikeme, what could have influenced her decision to cheat since her original result showed that she did well?

Students don’t believe that they can pass exams with hard work. Now that people are beginning to recognise excellence, they always feel that it does not matter how they get it. Our society celebrates people who have made it without knowing how they made it.

When we were in the university, we hardly saw people driving cars, but today, undergraduates are driving big cars, and nobody is asking them what they are doing. When you ask some of the younger ones, they will say going to school is useless. So, cheating is gradually pilfering into the psyche of the young ones, and they think the only way to excellence is when you cheat.

From Mmesoma’s confession, she must have seen her result but that was not enough for her, she wanted to be celebrated for who she was not because that is what is going on in the society. People are celebrated without putting in the effort, so the answer lies in societal values. Hers is not the only case, and everybody is paying lip service to the larger problem.

Young people are saying they want to have money even if it is for a year. We need to start inculcating values in children from primary school. If you want to excel, there is no shortcut, you must work hard. Some schools and teachers are compromised, when you ask students, they will tell you what they do. So, it is a societal issue, and we need to start addressing it. Go to schools, and talk to students, you will understand what is going on.

Could it be a spiritual issue, or it is just psychological?

It is not spiritual, it is psychological. It is the society that reinforces that behavior. A son from school will drive home a big car and some mothers will start dancing around without asking what that son is doing. Others are watching how the son is being celebrated so they want to be like him.

While growing up, if you come home with any property that does not belong to you, you will not enter the house because your parents will deal with you mercilessly until you tell them where you got it from. When the society reinforces bad behavior, others will learn from it. There is nothing spiritual about it, we are products of our society.

How can those involved in this kind of act get out of it?

The family is the simplest unit for behavioural change. What is the value system of the parents that run families? What are they inculcating in their children? That is the only place you can begin to make meaningful change, so let us revisit family values.

Families must stand for what is genuine and respectable and make sure they address every bad behavior in their children. The kids that are raised by these families are the ones that go into society. If every family does what they are supposed to do, there will be sanity. The media can start doing what we call modelling.

Even in the movie industry, when you watch some of the values they portray, you cannot help but shake your head. If they start portraying good values as what everybody should look up to and would be rewarded for, people will start changing their behaviour.

The major example should come from the government. Let them begin to do what they preach, if they create an environment for everyone to follow, people will have no choice but to follow the standard. We may not have a perfect community, but we can have a reference point to guide others.

Today, we live in this country like it is no man’s land. You hear a lot of scandals happening in churches and these people are members of different families. During our days in school, we used to have corporate punishment but today, you dare not touch anyone. In fact, the teachers are afraid of the students. During our time, we were afraid of our teachers.

When you do any bad thing and they say they will report you to your teacher, you will want to change immediately but today, the teachers are reported to the students who now punish them, or their parents will come and punish the teachers. So, most of the problems begin with families and society because that is where they come from.

Meanwhile, people can change. For instance, Nigerians conform to rules when they travel abroad but when the same people get back to this country, they become something else. So, it is a combination of what the government wants, what the society wants, and what the family wants. If you want to start a new behavioural change, you need to go back to the family because if it has the right values, the children will take it to school and the burden on teachers will reduce. It is the family that builds the foundation for good behaviour.

Even in the civil service, forgery is a widespread problem, so what is the solution to this?

Forgery is an age-long thing. But how do we look at it and how do we punish it? Are the punishments enough deterrent for other people not to do it? In Nigeria, we have age limits for jobs and the jobs are not there. They want you to go to school early, but most people don’t go to schools early because they don’t have the facilities or the resources, so some have to grow up and make their money before going to school and after getting the qualification, you tell them that their age is beyond the employment age. What do you think will be the hope of such people?

My take is that we should remove age limitation as a factor in employment, and look at what people can do, their ability. If we can start with that, who will want to falsify their age? Then, we can have a retirement age and make it competitive for people to show what they can do. The government should create job opportunities and remove the age embargo so that people can go to where they can fit in and where they can function.

In every society, you must expect some people to be law-breakers no matter how hard you try and the only way to checkmate them is to have interconnectivity. If anybody submits their certificates you can reach out via networks, make calls, and cross-check, so that you can bounce them before they get into the system. If our information are put together, anywhere you put any of your certificates, it will show whether it is genuine or not, and if everyone knows that the government is serious about it, it will also act as a check.

The bottom line remains that if you are brought up properly, why will you want to forge your certificate or age?

Looking at the case of Mmesoma, what is the lesson others can learn from this?

Did you see the line of defence in Mmesoma’s case? They tribalised it, and nobody was looking at the main issue anymore. The point is that as a society, we should stand up to speak with one voice when we see something that is not going well.

The first thing would have been to investigate and come out with the facts and people would look at it objectively and condemn the act. Others are watching too, and it has come to a logical end, and everybody is saying they are sorry, the younger ones watching now will want to know what is next after this confession.

On what next, do you think sanctions or psychotherapy will address it?

Due to the tension the Mmesoma issue generated, the girl must have been traumatised because deep down in her mind, she didn’t know it would escalate this much. If care is not taken, it might destroy her except they seek psychotherapeutic intervention that could bring behavioural change so that she will know that there is no shortcut to success and then rebuild her self-esteem. Because how is she going to stand in front of her colleagues now without people making sly remarks about her?

Those are the consequences of her actions that she will bear for a while, which is why she requires intervention to cope with them. There are so many techniques that can help her, like trauma intervention, self-awareness, and mindfulness training, among others. Again, you can’t call for interventions until you do the assessment. It is when you assess her properly, you will understand the reason behind the action, and that is when an intervention could be planned. The first thing is to take her to a clinical psychologist who would be able to do the assessment and interventions.

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