PMB’s Certificate And The Raging Controversy

Despite the presentation of attestation certificate to President Muhammadu Buhari by WAEC last week, the certificate saga has continued unabated. In this report, JONATHAN NDA-ISAIAH examines the issues surrounding the raging controversy

It has been four years since the controversy over President Muhammadu Buhari’s Cambridge West African School Certificate (WASC) result started. The certificate saga came to fore during campaigns for the 2015 general election. The president had said at the time that his credentials were with the military board, a position he has maintained until now.The president had said at the time that his credentials were with the military board, a position he has maintained until now.

Not satisfied with his explanation then, an Abuja-based legal practitioner, Nnamdi Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe, had dragged Buhari to court, challenging the authenticity of his WASC result. He argued that the president did not meet the educational requirement to contest for president. He alleged that the president did not sit for WASC in 1961 as he had claimed.argued that the president did not meet the educational requirement to contest for president. He alleged that the president did not sit for WASC in 1961 as he had claimed.

Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court in Abuja dismissed Buhari’s preliminary objection to Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe’s suit. Dissatisfied with the ruling, the president employed the services of 13 Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), and 10 other counsels to appeal the ruling of Justice Ademola. The lawyer eventually withdraw the case from court.

But just when Nigerians thought that the issue had been put to rest, the certificate scandal, like a Phoenix, got a fresh life of its own last month. Again, President Buhari said his WASC certificate was still with the military. It generated public opprobrium as Nigerians in the opposition camp insisted that the president must show proof of his result.

Specifically, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) challenged President Buhari to show proof of his integrity by presenting his academic credentials, “if he has any”, to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and put an end to the controversy trailing his school certificate.

The party also tasked the Commander-in-Chief to fulfil his obligation like other presidential candidates instead of bugging the commission with affidavits. The PDP in a statement issued by its spokesman, Kola Ologbondiyan, said while its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has submitted his educational and other relevant documents to INEC, President Buhari is rather seeking ways to short-circuit the system, instead of complying with set rules.

The statement noted: “A situation where President Buhari has been dodging the certificate issue raises huge questions of integrity, which demands that he makes available his credentials, or apologize to Nigerians, if he has none, so that the nation can move ahead.

“President Buhari knows by now that Nigerians are no longer interested in his claims in an affidavit wherein he stated, ‘I am the above-named person and the deponent of this affidavit herein. All my academic qualification documents as filled in my Presidential form, APC/001/2015 are currently with the Secretary of the Military Board as of the time of this affidavit.

“PDP maintains that integrity strictly demands that President Buhari, particularly as the commander-in-chief, writes to the military authorities directing them to forward his claimed credentials to INEC, as requisite evidence of compliance with a key requirement for election into the Office of the President, under section 131 (d) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

“That President Buhari and the previous INEC succeeded in circumventing the law in 2015 does not make such acceptable in our current electoral process”.

Last week, Buhari responded to PDP’s challenge by applying and receiving the attestation and confirmation of his 1961 WASC examination result from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).

The documents were presented to the president at the presidential villa during a courtesy visit by a delegation of WAEC led by its Registrar, Dr Iyi Uwadiae.

President Buhari thanked the examination board for upholding its integrity over the years, adding that he did not expect anything less from the institution. He said it would have been impossible for him to have attended the Defence Services Staff College, India (1973) and thereafter, United States Army War College, as a Nigerian military officer, if he didn’t sit for the WASC examinations in 1961.

The president recounted that during his secondary school days, it was very difficult to commit examination fraud, even though it was not impossible. He noted: ”My colleagues and I who spent close to nine years in boarding school both in primary and secondary, including Gen. Musa Yar’Adua, when we intended to join the military we had to take a military examination.

”We were examined in three subjects, English, Mathematics and General Knowledge because English is the language for general instruction throughout the country because of our colonial heritage.

”Mathematics in the military was necessary, coupled with Geography. We were trained how to be dropped off in the bush, given only a pair of compass and since we were not astronomers, you have to learn to find your way, calculate, using the Pythagoras Theorem and others to work out your position”.

But the opposition PDP struck again, alleging this time around that the presidency and WAEC were merely deceiving Nigerians on President Buhari’s WASC certificate. The party, in a statement issued last Friday by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, said what WAEC did was politics, which amounted to a tragi-comedy.

He stated: “We never expected Mr President to dramatically come this low because you cannot have a certificate and be calling it an attestation. What are they attesting to? We stand by our position that Mr President has no school certificate.

“It’s simply a political certificate. We have said that the Buhari presidency and his handlers are always fretting at the mention of a certificate. So, they want to mislead Nigerians to say that Mr President has a school certificate.

“If Mr President has a certificate, why did he not use it in 2015 election? Why is the certificate suddenly emerging few months to the election?”

Unable to withstand PDP’s ad hominem attack on the president, the Buhari Campaign Organisation (BCO) jumped into fray, lashing out at the opposition party for insisting that Buhari has no school certificate. According to the group, the PDP is bereft of a clear cut manifesto to engage in issue-based campaigns.

In a statement by its Director of Communications and Strategic Planning, Mallam Gidado Ibrahim, the BCO noted that instead of telling Nigerians why they want to return to power, the PDP has resorted to flogging a dead horse needlessly with Buhari’s certificate scandal.

Ibrahim said, “We thought that the campaign for the 2019 elections should evolve past a certificate scandal which has already been overplayed. But the PDP, with a shrill voice, has gone to the grave yard to resurrect a dead certificate issue. This is the same issue they dwelled on in 2015 and failed woefully.

“From the antics of the opposition party, it is glaring that the PDP lacks a clear cut manifesto with which to engage the ruling party in issue-based campaigns and constructive debates for 2019. This explains vividly the party’ posturing and browbeating that is nothing short of a wild goose chase.

“Curiously, this is the same PDP that has been talking with a shrill voice how the campaign for 2019 should be issue-based and focused on how the candidates can better the lot of Nigerians. It is now left for Nigerians to crosscheck properly whether this over flogged certificate scandal amounts to constructive electioneering”.

Analysts and some close watchers of the polity have argued that the certificate scandal involving the president is needless. The thinking is that Section 131 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) is clear on the conditions to be fulfilled by someone aspiring to the position of the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Section 131(d) stipulates that such a person must have been educated up to “at least School Certificate level or its equivalent”.

Keen observers contend that even though the concerns raised over the certificate issue may be legitimate, the scandal is also a distraction, as the presidency has relentlessly insisted. Besides, the pundits argued, the allegations have not changed from the same issue that was bandied four years ago without any headway.

Agreeing with these analysts, it is trite to point out that just like in 2015, many individuals, groups and opposition parties have threatened litigation and vowed to get INEC to remove the president from the ballot for next year’s election. But the question begging for answer is: Why flog a dead horse that has already been over-flogged?

The simple truth here is that of the two set of Nigerians pushing for and against the scandal there are people who want to see a clean contest and and those in the opposition who want to exploit it for political gains.