President Muhammad Buhari’s certificate controversy has captured public imagination at a time when addressing fundamental questions about how to wrestle Nigeria from the claws of weakening economic performance indicators would have created more value.
For the first time in two decades, the Nigerian economy contracted in 2016 with a negative growth rate of -1.58 percent down from the 2.90 percent expansion recorded in 2015. The economy returned to a sluggish positive growth of 0.55 percent in the second quarter of 2017. Since then, Nigeria’s highest recorded growth is 2.11 percent recorded in the last quarter of 2017.
The unemployment rate has doubled from 9.9 percent in the third quarter (Q3) of 2015 to 18.8 percent in Q3 2017, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The number of unemployed Nigerians also increased to 15.99 million in Q3 2017 from 11.9 million in Q3 2016, NBS data show. But many Nigerians have been distracted by the storm in a cup generated by the certificate controversy.
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The West African Examination Council (WAEC) waded into the storm by providing the embattled President Buhari, a retired-major general of the Nigerian army a certificate of attestation on Nov. 2 but this only sparked more arguments and counter arguments.
“@MBuhari How come mathematics and woodwork that you had F9 (fail) both disappeared in your new @waecnigeria result. Keep embarrassing us sir. I wonder what basis senator Adeleke is being prosecuted?” Sule Mathew Oloche, CEO of RBG Energy Limited tweeted on Nov. 3.
“Sorry, bro. We no longer capture in our certificates or Attestation of Results the subjects a candidate had F9s in, please,” WAEC retorted.
While the Certificate saga dominates headlines, big issues for any incoming administration to grapple with remain.
A September, 2018 Nigeria country forecast report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) expects that there would be no significant reforms in the Nigerian economy between 2018 and 2022.
“The sort of fundamental structural reforms needed to propel the economy onto a higher growth path is unlikely during the forecast period,” the report stated.
Reforms such as the liberalisation of foreign exchange markets or market led pricing in the energy sector have been anticipated. However, the EIU believes that this will be contentious leading to a practically impossible reform of the sector.
The 2018 budget passed in June shows that proposed recurrent expenditure stood at N3.51 trillion while capital expenditure is at N2.89 trillion. As a percent of revenue, recurrent expenditure is estimated at 68.27 percent of government revenue while capital expenditure is only 31.73 percent.
Also according to EIU forecast, while spending to gross domestic product (GDP) of the country increases, government retained revenue to GDP will remain as low as 3.8 percent.
Views on the certificate situation depends on who you talk to, an academic, a politician or the common man on the street.
“For most academics, it is clear that President Buhari has no certificate and WAEC trying to cover up for him cannot stand,” Harold Nwariaku, principal consultant at Lekki-based Harold & Co. Consulting, a human capital development company said on phone.
“The age issue and grades obtained at the so-called WAEC exams do not add up.”
Article131, (sub-sections a-d) of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution as amended provides as follows: A person shall be qualified for election to the office of the President if: he is a citizen of Nigeria by birth; he has attained the age of forty years; he is a member of a political party and is sponsored by that political party; and he has been educated up to at least School Certificate level or its equivalent.
President Buhari was democratically elected president of Africa’s most populous nation since 2015 but had before now failed to present his school certificate since 2014 when he ran on the All Progressives Congress (APC) platform.
But in an Aug. 10 2015 tweet WAEC had stated “The Council has introduced “Attestation of Results” that can be obtained on request to serve as replacement for lost/missing certificates.”
However there is a snag.
London-based Cambridge Assessment (now University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate) was the original body that was in charge of conducting school certificate examinations across West Africa in the 1960s.
In a response to one of the requests to authenticate President Buhari’s controversial certificate, Cambridge said on its website: “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 General Data Protection Regulations, Data Protection Act 2018 and section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.”
Meanwhile, the candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar submitted relevant documents, with a Diploma in Law in 1969 from the Ahmadu Bello University being his highest qualification.
“For some politicians this is an opportunity to nail the President’s stance as a man of Integrity. The School Certificate controversy is the most glaring way to discredit the president but I doubt that this will have much impact,” Nwariaku said.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s Secondary School Certificate has been a subject of polemic since 2015 when it was found missing in the forms he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the purpose of the presidential election. At that time, Buhari had through a sworn affidavit claimed that all his credentials were with the Secretary of the Military Board.
“I am the above named person and the deponent of this affidavit herein. All my academic qualifications documents as filled in my presidential form, APC/001/2015, are currently with the secretary, military board as of the time of presenting this affidavit,” he stated in both declarations.
For everyday Nigerians, this is a convenient source of distraction. “It has distracted from the recent Boko Haram killings, the terrible state of both social and physical infrastructure and police extortion on our roads,” Nwariaku added.
STEPHEN ONYEKWELU
