OLUWAFEMI MORGAN examines the controversy surrounding the academic
records of some candidates in the forthcoming general elections and
the implications
The presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress,
Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, few weeks ago claimed he lost his certificates
when he went on self-exile between 1994 and 1998. The only educational
qualification on his form, as published by the Independent National
Electoral Commission, was that he attended the Chicago State
University in the United States for his tertiary education.
His Peoples Democratic Party counterpart, Atiku Abubakar, deposed
to an affidavit that his name on his school leaving certificate was
Saddiq Abubakar. Similarly, his running mate and Governor of Delta
State, Dr Ifeanyi Okowa, informed INEC that he lost his secondary
school certificate.
These claims have, no doubt, given the electorate a lot to worry
about, with regards to the quality of leaders they are constrained to
choose from at the polls.
According to Section 131(d) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), a
person shall be qualified for election to the office of the President
if they have at least a school certificate, a requirement that many
argue was due for an upward review. But despite the current
constitutional provision, the nation’s electoral system has continued
to be plagued by contentious academic claims and certificate scandals.
As it has turned out, Nigerians face this drama of certificate scandal
every election season.
In the current republic, which began in 1999, a businessman and
politician, Salisu Buhari, became the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, but his tenure was short-lived when his claim of
having obtained a certificate at the University of Toronto turned out
to be false.
An investigative report revealed that Buhari did not only forge his
certificate but also did not serve in Kano State as claimed. The
certificates presented to INEC by Buhari formed the basis of the
damning investigation and the scandal that forced him to resign. He
was tried and convicted for forgery.
Also, in the run-up to the 2015 elections, critics and members of the
opposition PDP had faulted the academic qualification of the
President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), as the candidate of
the APC in 2015 and 2019.
The scandal went on with many describing him as unqualified to hold
the highest political office in the country. But in November 2018, the
authorities of the West African Examination Council presented the
former military leader with his West African Senior School Certificate
showing that he took the examination in 1961 before joining the
Nigerian Army and passed History, Geography, Hausa, English Language
and Health Science.
However, for the forthcoming elections, it seems the plethora of
uncertainties surrounding the credentials of some candidates remains
more problematic than the way things were when Buhari was a candidate.
For instance, Tinubu had claimed in an affidavit and his INEC forms
that his primary and secondary school certificates were taken by
unknown persons during the military junta, at a time when he went into
exile over his support for the retrieval of the June 12 presidential
mandate of the late Chief Moshood Abiola.
Tinubu only listed the Chicago State University where he said he
graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in
1979. An ally of the former Lagos State governor during the 1999
governorship election in Lagos, Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, had at the
time claimed responsibility for wrongly informing INEC that Tinubu
attended Government College Ibadan, Oyo State.
Still in the APC, Tinubu’s interim running mate, Kabiru Masari, who
has since withdrawn as a placeholder, had also deposed to an affidavit
that his original primary and secondary school certificates were
missing. Masari, who later withdrew when Tinubu announced a former
Governor of Borno State, Kashim Shettima, as his running mate, claimed
he attended Masari Primary School, Katsina State, between 1972 and
1978. He said he also attended the Katsina Teachers College in 1982,
where he earned a Grade II Certificate.
But the leading opposition party is not left out in the certificate
drama. The school leaving certificate of the former vice-president and
candidate of the PDP also raised some eyebrows. Atiku, a former
Customs officer, had sworn an affidavit informing INEC that he changed
his name from Saddiq Abubakar, which was reflected on his certificate,
to Atiku Abubakar. Meanwhile, his running mate, Okowa, also declared
that he lost his secondary school certificate.
Similarly, the presidential candidate of the Young Peoples Party,
Malik Ado-Ibrahim, said he lost his certificate. And in the Action
Democratic Party, its presidential candidate, Sani Yabagi, said in an
affidavit that the name on his degree and West African Senior School
Certificates were different from his current name.
While some political pundits argue that the issue of contentious and
missing certificates does not impair the ability of a leader to
provide excellent leadership. They argue that some past leaders who
were well educated with genuine certificates didn’t fare better.
They note further that in a country of very educated citizens, the
credentials of the leaders, especially at the level of the president
and vice president, are important. They believe it is clear to many
that the ripple effect of bad leadership continues to plague Nigerians
because leaders need a certain level of education and exposure to
proffer solutions to the multiplicity of challenges bedevilling the
nation.
The Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre,
Auwal Rafsanjani, said politicians needed to be transparent about
their academic records instead of making false claims that might
eventually bring them into disrepute.
Rafsanjani stressed that the constitution provides a liberal
standpoint for political candidates, and that the most minimal
certification required should not be made to cause any ruckus within
the space. He urged politicians to be truthful about their
qualifications without stifling the democratic process with
unnecessary lies.
He added, “It is bad for a politician to claim to have a PhD and other
certificates they do not have, especially when all they need to be
voted for is the school leaving certificate. Even if the person does
not have one, we know that some of those who had ordinary primary
school leaving certificates in the past were far better than some of
the new generation who have BSc and PhD. It becomes an issue of
integrity when you say you have what you don’t have and it will go a
long way to shift attention from issue-based campaigns.”
However, for a human rights lawyer and former Chairman of the
Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, Malachy Ugwummadu, missing
and questionable certificates from potential leaders negatively affect
the psyche of many Nigerians, especially the millions of youths who
have robust credentials without jobs and the social and economic
well-being to show for their academic strides.
Ugwummadu stressed the need for a constitutional amendment that would
make the essential requirement for politicians who are vying for
elective positions a bachelor’s degree, instead of the current school
leaving certificate as stipulated by the constitution.
He added, “To put it bluntly, yes, it does affect the psyche and
sensibilities of the average Nigerian, many of whom have their
certificates even if it does not fetch them any job or privileges.
They are scandalised; we are all scandalised that those who seek the
highest position in the land are unable to categorically, firmly and
with conclusive evidence establish that they have certifications for
the claims they make.
“However, part of the problem is also the constitution. The
Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria provides for a very
low educational requirement because it is merely interested in
establishing that he or she is educated up to the secondary school
level or its equivalence. So, if one is able to produce even a
testimonial by a principal, or a collection of friends, or schoolmates
or associates who say they are aware that you went to school, you have
satisfied that provision.”
Ugwummadu, however, stressed that what is desirable for such an
exalted position in the 21st century is a leader who is supposed to
play on the world stage and is expected to interface and engage with a
sophisticated world and even appreciate the corresponding concerns of
contemporary times.
He added, “Your certificate needs not be in doubt. It is to that
extent that Nigerians are becoming scandalised. Wait a minute, are we
not making a mistake here in assuming that these people who are
elected to these exalted positions are persons who can even engage and
understand the nuances and dynamics of contemporary issues without
clear evidence that they attended schools?
“So if our constitution had elevated the constitutional requirement
under Section 131(d), we probably would have gone past this, such that
all of these mundane excuses, inexplicable excuses flying around
concerning basic secondary education would be a thing of the past.”
On the flip side, Ugwummadu said many Nigerian leaders who had
extensive “paper certification,” to prove their education had also
fallen below expectations. He, therefore, urged Nigerians to pick up
the gauntlet of electing the kind of leaders they want since the
sovereignty of the country lies solely with the people and that people
need to decide what impacts on the country and what must be
disallowed. Nevertheless, the human rights lawyer said given the
current state of the educational system, the basic requirement for
elective positions should be made to be a bachelor’s degree so that
the Nigerian leader could have a full grasp of memos and briefs and
could position themselves, and by extension, the country as one that
competes on the world stage.
He said further, “We have seen PhD holders who messed up critically
and we have seen professors who went to jail. In the same vein, we
have seen people with very few certificates who have shown more
patriotism, more altruism and have been better disposed to be part of
the solution of the country.”
Similarly, a lawyer and political analyst, Liborous Oshoma, lamented
that political leaders had continued to take the citizens for granted
by the lackadaisical declaration of their missing certificates.
He stressed that Nigeria had continued to be ruled by the worst of her
citizens because mediocrity had pushed performance-based meritocracy
to the backwater of the values of the nation, thereby ridiculing the
value of qualitative education in the country.
Oshoma lamented that many candidates do not even consider the public
office as a job and a call to the service of their countrymen.
He argued, “It is laughable. Imagine yourself going for an interview
in a serious organisation, and you are vying for the position of the
Managing Director, and then you told the panel ‘my certificates are
missing,’ or you say, ‘all I have is an affidavit.’
You couldn’t even get at least certified true copies of those
certificates. Do you know how they will look at you? (They would feel)
that you are so unserious, that you cannot put your acts together. So
when a politician tells you that his certificates are missing , it
means you do not matter in the scheme of things, so he can throw
anything at you.
“It also means the certificates do not mean anything to you. You know
how the rest of us protect our certificates. You want to keep them in
a safe place because you need them to advance your career. What this
tells you is how much we value our political offices. Nigerians don’t
care, so the politicians also don’t care; that is why they can throw
anything at us.
“Anyways, Section 131 says that all you need to be President is a
school leaving certificate or its equivalence, and its equivalence by
definition is if you can read and write in the opinion of INEC. So,
when you have such a low entry qualification to be the president of
Nigeria, why won’t you have candidates who would tell you ‘well, a
certificate doesn’t matter, just look at my competence. I have been a
governor, I have been a senator’. For me, that is arrogance. If we are
to take public office seriously we have to take a look at all of
these, not just certificates or claims of confidence, but we should be
able to verify some of these competencies.
He continued, “This is one country where there are no verifiable
parameters for rating competence. A man who promises A to Z is only
able to deliver A to D, and he says, ‘You need to praise me because it
is not easy to govern.’ Meanwhile, he saw that it wasn’t easy before
he threw his hat in the ring. Political office is about service, yet
they are taking so much for that office and are delivering next to
nothing. There is no key performance index to rate the performance of
the President. In civilised societies, we would have seen series of
resignations but here, people remain in their offices.”
The legal practitioner noted further that Nigeria needed to devise a
means of determining verifiable competence by cross-checking the
quality of their educational background, adding, however, that “it
does not mean we should sacrifice education on the altar of these
shenanigans going on” as “there is no substitute for qualitative
education”.
He said the short-term implication of ignoring the phenomenon of
missing and questionable certificates is that it reduces the bar for
quality governance and would further erode the urgency to educate the
citizens since the least of qualified men are considered examples of
success and leadership.
Oshoma added, “We need to create policies to checkmate missing and
questionable certificates among our leaders. If we have people
(leaders) who are educated and value education, we wouldn’t have the
Academic Staff Union of Universities on strike for months and they
wouldn’t care.
“If education is not important, the children of the popular road
transport union in Lagos would be selling herbs and aphrodisiacs in
Oshodi, but they are schooling abroad.
“That is to tell you that even those who are not educated know its
value, but how come when it comes to governing Nigeria, we say it
doesn’t matter. So, we need to put measures in place to checkmate all
of these. If we can’t find them (measures), then we are not ready.”
Punch.