EASTERN PROVINCE

NGOMA — Police in Kibungo, Ngoma district are holding a senior six student of Gasesta Secondary School, for allegedly forging academic documents.

Olivier Uwizeyimana, 18, was arrested last Friday on allegations of using fake documents to apply for admission in a district school and to source for other requirements from the district.

Uwizeyimana appeared at the district in January this year claiming he was until December last year, living in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé, since 1994.

Upon reaching the district, he presented documents bearing a stamp and a signature of the Director of Child Service Protection Law called Okioyara Abdul Azziz of Cameroon. He was registered as a needy child and sent to Gasesta Secondary School.

According to documents in his possession, the boy was adopted in 1994 at four-years by a Belgian national called Mailigon Alfred Bieu, who was by then working with the United Nations (UN) in Rwanda. But later they both moved to Cameroon when Mailigon changed work location. He claimed ignorance of any other language apart from French and English.

The student allegedly returned after Mailigon died, because the relatives of the deceased could not move to Belgium with him.

Bosco Rutagendwa, Ngoma district official in-charge of sports and culture, who offered to stay with Uwizeyimana for the past three months, said the child had never used any other language apart from English and French in their communication.

"One day his friend with whom they study told me that at school Uwizeyimana speaks fluent Kiswahili but I ignored it," Rutagendwa said.

"But it sounded strange to me when one student from Cyibogora Secondary School in Cyangugu told me recently that they were studying together at the same school last year. His documents indicate that last year he was still in Cameroon. Its when I started to believe all they had told me that he speaks even Swahili which language is not even common in Cameroon."

Rutagendwa then reported the matter to the vice mayor in-charge of social affairs Josephine Mutesayire and later to the police.

"I feared so much because for the past three months I have been living with him. He had never spoken any other language apart from French, English and broken Kinyarwanda, like any other person learning a new language," he says.

He added that some of Uwizeyimana’s former schoolmates in Cyangungu told him that the boy had never been to Cameroon. They also told him that he speaks fluent Kinyarwanda.

It emerged that the boy’s mother died before 1994 of AIDS and his father, who had reportedly separated with the mother died later the same year in prison. He grew up without parental care and that he has never been to Cameroon.

According to police, Uwizeyimana in fluent Kinyarwanda admitted forging the documents to attain education.

The student reportedly explained that he moved from Cyangugu to Ngoma so that his tricks could work out. He further said that Mailigon, his former care taker was "a ghost care taker" who has never existed.

Ends