Following the seeming resolution of the issues surrounding the educational qualification of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Maj-Gen Muhammadu Buhari (retd), the prospect of redirecting the campaign to core issues remains a variable for the political gladiators.
By Emmanuel Aziken, Political Editor
‘DEMOCRACY is all about freedom and any democracy without it is not democracy,” President Goodluck Jonathan said from the political podium last Wednesday in Dutse, Jigawa State as he sought to change the tune of the campaign after the certificate saga surrounding the man in hot pursuit for his job seemed to have cleared up.
The president’s words were apparently reflective of the fact that the credibility question which his campaign team had tried to stamp on Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC may have fallen flat.
Buhari and his close associates had derisively dismissed questions about his certificate after two newspapers had reported that he only submitted an affidavit in lieu of his secondary school certificate.
Campaign spokesman
Jonathan’s foot soldiers, notably his campaign spokesman, Femi Fani-Kayode had led the charge against Buhari questioning the qualification of the APC candidate to stand for the polls.
Buhari’s decision to ignore the allegation that he did not possess a secondary school certificate and the defence put up by some of his handlers including a member of the APC presidential screening committee that the constitution only required proof of a secondary school education, only lured Jonathan’s handlers to draw for blood.
And they were swift in moving in on with their seeming prey.“It is disingenuous for Buhari to say that he contested previous elections and that the issue of his qualifications did not arise,” Fani-Kayode said in a statement last Monday.
“The fact that he got away with it in 2003, 2007 and 2011 does not make it right. The minimum that Nigerians require from Buhari is the presentation of his secondary school certificate which enabled him to gain admission into the Nigerian Military College in 1962 and on which basis he became a commissioned officer of the Nigerian Army.
“As long as he cannot produce that secondary school certificate, we believe that he is not qualified to run for the Presidency of Nigeria,” Fani-Kayode pressed on.
The matter for Buhari was further exacerbated when the outgoing director of army public relations, Brigadier-General Olajide Laleye addressed a press conference where he claimed that in response to public concerns that the army had decided to release all details of the credentials as concerning Buhari.
He disclosed that there was no evidence that Buhari ever submitted a certificate in the course of his admission noting almost derisively that what Buhari had was a notice from his principal in 1961 that the candidate was of good character and was in position to pass his papers.
“Neither the original copy, Certified True Copy, CTC, nor statement of result of Major General Muhammadu Buhari’s WASC result is in his personal file. What I have said here is what is contained in his service records’ personal file. We have not added or subtracted anything,” the army spokesman said.
Remarkably, his action was without the prompting of the affected officer, that is, Buhari, a development that raised concern in the polity that the army may have taken a partisan support against the former head of state. The APC was swift in responding to the assertion by the army as it noted that the institution was being manipulated for political ends.
If blood was bleeding, the action of the army spokesman turned the cut into a gush.
The army’s revelation came on the day that Buhari had a very successful rally that practically grounded Kano. The revelation was almost turning the success in Kano into a sour.
Many who had been following the issue, however, did not know that a few days before the army’s claim, Buhari had himself made an application to his former school for the statement of his result and the application which ordinarily should have been honoured within a day, however, took days to be approved.
Serious issue
For what reason, no one could say especially as Buhari’s old school, Katsina Provincial College, now Government Secondary School, Katsina is under the control of a PDP government.
0 comments:
Post a Comment