Muhammadu Buhari is not qualified to be Nigeria’s president -By Femi Aribisala

Anywhere else, it would be an open and shut case that President Buhari is not qualified to be the head of the Nigerian government. Nevertheless, he has been president for the past four years. The question that remains is this: will he continue to get away with violating the law? Or has he finally met his Waterloo?

The case against Buhari being president is overwhelming. At its most fundamental, he does not fulfill the constitutional requirement that the president must be educated up to school certificate level or its equivalent. Section 138, subsequent 1A of the Electoral Act (as amended) says: “An election may be questioned on the grounds that a person whose election is questioned was, at the time of the election, not qualified to contest the election.”

This requirement completely disqualifies Muhammadu Buhari from even contesting the election.

Buhari does not possess the minimum educational requirement to be president of Nigeria. He has danced and danced around this disability over the years. But now, the courts have to make a decision on the matter. Providing photographs of ostensible primary school days just won’t cut it. Saying you speak and understand English does not address the matter.

The answer is for Buhari to show his certificate, and he has failed to do so.

Story Story

Buhari says: “I left home at the age of 10 or 11 and went to school, like I said. And I was in the boarding school for nine years. In primary school and secondary school, I was in the boarding house and from there, I went straight into the Army.”

This indicates that Buhari did not complete his schooling. A man should know at what age he went to school, but Buhari does not seem to know. He says it is either 10 or 11. This is fishy. Buhari started school at 11, and he joined the army at the age of 19 in January, 1962. However, it takes more than eight years to finish primary and secondary school. Therefore, it would appear that, instead of completing school, Buhari opted to join the army.

Buhari ran for the presidency on three earlier occasions when he did not contravene any law with regard to his non-existent certificates because there were no provisions for them then. However, with the new Electoral Act, there is now the requirement for the proof of credentials.

But instead of providing his certificates to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as now required by law, Buhari deposed to an affidavit at a High Court in Abuja that: “All my academic qualifications documents as filled in my presidential form, are currently with the Secretary, Military Board as of the time of presenting this affidavit.”

This affidavit turned out to be false. The military board says it does not have Buhari’s academic qualification credentials. This means Buhari committed perjury when he swore on oath that the military has them. As a matter of fact, the military board does not even have the photocopies of Buhari’s credentials because he did not submit them when he enrolled into the Nigerian Army.

Maybe Buhari expected the military to let sleeping dogs lie about this. However, the Nigerian Army released the following statement which quickly gave the lie to Buhari’s affidavit:

“It is a practice in the Nigerian Army that before candidates are shortlisted for commissioning into the officers’ cadre of the Service; the Selection Board verifies the original copies of credentials that are presented. However, there is no available record to show that this process was followed in the 1960s. Neither the original copy, Certified True Copy (CTC); nor statement of result of Major General M Buhari’s WASC result, is in his personal file.”

Guilty of Perjury

This denial by the army that it has Buhari’s certificates shows the president committed perjury, as mentioned. In the bid to repair the damage, Buhari cobbled together a press conference during which he said the following: “I had assumed all along that all my records were in the custody of the Military Secretary of the Nigerian Army. Much to my surprise, we are now told that although a record of the result is available, there are no copies of the certificates in my personal file.”

This excuse is hogwash. An experienced politician like Buhari who is running for president, surely has a panoply of aides, assistants and advisers. He should know that it not acceptable for a man to swear an oath in court based on assumptions “all along.” Oaths are sworn as certification that what is said is true. Truth is not amenable to assumptions.

Section 118 of the Nigerian criminal code reads: “Any person who commits perjury is liable to imprisonment for fourteen years.” This is the fate that must now befall Muhammadu Buhari who, even as president, must not be allowed to be above the law.

Buhari stated in his affidavit that his academic qualification documents “are currently with the Secretary, Military Board as of the time of presenting this affidavit.” However, the evidence indicates that Buhari must have known that this was not true at the time he swore on oath to this. This is because Buhari was the military secretary, Army Headquarters, from 1978 to 1979.

This means Buhari should not be believed when he said: “I had assumed all along that all my records were in the custody of the Military Secretary of the Nigerian Army.” On the contrary, Buhari knew, from his experience as military secretary, that certified true copies of the credentials of military men are not kept with the military board.

Nobody keeps the originals of their credentials with the organisations where they worked: only photocopies are kept there. Therefore, Buhari was just being disingenuous when he claimed his certificates were with the military.

New Gambit

Having been thrown under the bus by the military brass, Buhari came up with another gambit. He declared that Provincial Secondary School, Katsina (now known as Government College, Katsina), which he attended over 50 years ago, would make available to the public the school’s copy of his Cambridge/WASC certificate.

In doing this, Buhari blundered yet again. He showed that, in spite of his highfalutin campaign on the platform of integrity, he does not believe in transparency.

Buhari failed to explain the contradiction in the letter of recommendation from his school principal to the military, which suggests that he had not graduated from school before he opted out to join the military. The principal said: “I recommend him fit for military commissioning. I consider that he will pass the WASC examination in English, Math and three other subjects.”

If you want to confirm your exam credentials, you don’t write to your school asking for a copy of your result; you ask the relevant examinations council to provide you with a copy of your result. Instead of Buhari to ask for his result from Cambridge/WASC, he asked for his primary school in Katsina to tell us his result.

The primary school then presented a document that is inadmissible as evidence of Buhari’s result. It presented a result headlined “Katsina State Government,” when Katsina State did not even exist in 1961, when the result was alleged to have been given.

Inadmissible Credentials

A statement of result by Katsina Provincial Primary School is inadmissible, according to Buhari’s INEC affidavit. To repeat: Buhari said in an oath to INEC that “all” his academic qualification documents are with the military. When that did not work, he turned to his primary school. But what his primary school provided was not his academic qualification document. It provided what is ostensibly a photocopy. However, in law, you cannot authenticate a document by providing the photocopy. You must provide the original.

The credentials Buhari needs to rest his case are with Cambridge/WASC; and only Buhari can apply to get them. Therefore, if he was really interested in putting the matter to rest, he needed to apply to Cambridge WASC. The military board cannot apply for his credentials on his behalf; neither can Government College, Katsina.

The University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), now known as Cambridge Assessment, affirms this position on its website. It says: “We can only confirm or verify results at the direct request of or with the permission of a candidate. This is in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.”

Suspect Documents

The document that Government College, Katsina presented is suspect. It contains an obvious alteration in the Mathematics column, which effectively renders it invalid. Indeed, the document itself states that: “any alteration or erasure renders this Statement of Results invalid.” Other anomalies evident in the statement include a recent photograph on an old document; a wrong name (Mohamed instead of Muhammad); and the absence of the principal’s name.

There are other nagging questions pertaining to the validity of the results published by the Katsina State government. How come the expectations of Buhari’s grades, as expressed by his principal, turn out to be virtually the mirror-image of his alleged results? This suggests the likelihood Katsina State might have fabricated the Statement of Results to fit in with the grades predicted by the principal.

In effect, the evidence suggests that what Buhari has asked Government College, Katsina to present to INEC as evidence of his credentials is a forged certificate. According to Section 137 (10) of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution: “A person shall not be qualified for election to the office of President if he has presented a forged certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission.”

Forgery is implied in this case because the Katsina Ministry of Education issued the transcripts of an examination it did not conduct. The Ministry of Education, Katsina, did not conduct WASC exam in 1961. Therefore, the Ministry could not have issued Buhari a WASC certificate in 1961.

Today, the president again stands accused of perjury. He swore an oath and made an affidavit to INEC claiming he attended Elementary School Daura and Mai Aduaa between 1948 and 1952. However, those schools were not in even existence between 1948 and 1952. How then could Buhari have been in attendance there?

Buhari also swore on oath that he attended Middle School, Katsina between 1953 and 1956. But again, the Middle School was again not in existence as at 1953 and up till 1956. Finally, Buhari swore on oath that he attended Katsina Provincial College between 1956 and 1961. However, Katsina Provincial College was neither built, founded or even in existence between 1956 and 1961.

In Nigeria, if a university graduate does not have an NYSC certificate, he is ineligible for public employment. That is the law. Similarly, if a presidential candidate does not have a school leaving certificate, he is ineligible to stand for election as president of Nigeria.

faribisala@yahoo.com; www.femiaribisala.com