Buhari certificate: Something does not add up -By Bolaji Tunji

As preparation for next month’s mother of all election continues, one major issue that the campaign has thrown up is the issue of General Muhammadu Buhari’s certificate. It initially started as a joke. That the All Progressives Congress candidate. Gen Muhammadu Buhari does not have the prerequisite qualification to contest for the election. Section 131 of the Nigerian Constitution states that any contestant for the position of president of the country must have a minimum qualification of West African School Certificate (WASC).

Journalists had gone to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s office and discovered that Buhari’s certificate was not displayed on the notice board unlike the other contestants’. What the General did was to swear to an affidavit in November last year that his certificates were with the military board.

Gradually, the controversy took on a life of its own especially when the APC that is always quick to respond to issues concerning it or its candidate failed to say anything to clear the air, days after. It had also tried to buy time, that Buhari’s certificate was not an issue and that there were more pressing matters in the polity that should be the subject of campaign. That last line shows that the matter had come up in the APC even before it came into the public domain.

This fact was lent credence by Dr Ogbonnaya Onu who was chairman of APC’s presidential screening committee who confirmed that the matter came up during the screening and since General Buhari had sworn to an affidavit, the affidavit covered everything especially considering that he had risen to the pinnacle of his military career coupled with the fact of having attended many courses, both at home and abroad.

“So if there is evidence that somebody has attended military schools that are tertiary institutions up to the war college of the USA, I mean why should you really go into school certificate and so on?, he had explained.

But what he and everybody chose to ignore especially as it concerns the query on the WASC is that all other qualifications are nothing if the basic requirements are not met. There have been instances of people attending tertiary institutions in Nigeria with fake WASC results or other people’s result. When these are discovered, the institutions withdraw their certificate, if the person had graduated even with flying colours or rusticate such offender if still in the institution. Why is it that those institutions do not allow the offender to get away with such fraud? It is because you cannot built something on nothing. If General Buhari did not have the WASC, then any other certificate he had acquired as military leader would amount to nought.

Also, the military board did not do the needful when the General was being admitted into the military. The normal procedure, according to the army spokesman was for the selection board to verify the original credentials of candidates short listed for commissioning, but this was not followed in the General’s case. Why was this the case? Can we assume that certain things were waived for him at that time? What was the purpose of such waiver? Was that the usual practice and how many people got such waivers at the time? I know of a distant relative of mine in the early 70s who ran away from home due to a quarrel with the family, he never had any qualification to boast of, he eventually ended up in the Nigerian Army. It was thus easy in those days for one to be recruited in the army without any certificate. The army was always willing to train its own. Would that be the case with the General? And we are now having a grand cover up?

I raised this poser because the explanation offered, even with the presentation of the statement of result, are not convincing enough and there are still some unanswered questions. Are we saying that since the past 53 years, General Buhari didn’t know he didn’t have his WASC certificate or is he ignorant of the fact that nobody keeps the original certificate of any individual. And if he knew that, how come, it didn’t occur to him that his file at home did not contain the original copy of his WASC credential? Then in all the years, he had been contesting election and filling the INEC’s form for such, it never occurred to him that he did not have a copy of that certificate. What if INEC had told him to bring his credentials for the verification of his claims , what would he have presented? From what we know, he only swore to an affidavit last year, but he had been filling his forms since 2003 that he has WASC, why didn’t he apply to the military board for his original certificate, if he had always believed they had it?

It is really obvious that something is still not right even with the presentation of this statement of result. There is nobody that is not conversant with ‘Oluwole’ certificate, it is not as if I am saying the General presented Oluwole certificate, but the present situation requires further investigation. It is not to stop the General from contesting, but to lay the matter to rest and erase all doubts.

In his statement,’I assumed all along that all my records were in the custody of the Military Sec-retary of the Nigeria Army, a position I have the privilege to occupy myself’.

Having also occupied the position of the Secretary of the Military Board, without sounding disrespectful of the General, did it not occur to him to even check his own file or did he check the file and edited the content? Why did he swear to an affidavit in the first place? Is it the usual practice to swear an affidavit instead of making a request to the appropriate authority for a certified true copy of such credential?

The General claimed to have gone to school with late General Shehu Yar’Adua. On thursday afternoon, I logged into Wikipaedia to also check on the bio data of General Yar’Adua, curiously, the bio data had been edited an hour before I logged in by an anonymous user.

As it stands now, I am sure the last has not been heard on the matter.