Buhari’s integrity faces acid test over alleged perjury

The opposition All Progressives Congress (APC’s) presidential candidate in the next month’s general election, Muhammadu Buhari, a retired general, may have come under public bashing following his purported statements of result allegedly released recently by the Katsina State Ministry of Education.

The Buhari’s purportedly signed result by the current Principle of Katsina College which was widely reported in both the online and other media platforms last Wednesday claimed that the retired army Major General undertook the University of Cambridge West African School Certificate Examinations and obtained five credits in English Language, Geography, Hausa Language, History, and Health Science and failed Mathematics.

The Nigerian Army, which had earlier said that it had copies of the said certificate, later made a volte face last Tuesday through the outgoing Director of Army Public Relations; Brigadier- General Olajide Laleye that it could not attest to the details of the result; thereby sparking controversy; with the APC issuing a rather swift statement through its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, warning that the PDP and the Jonathan administration were playing a dangerous game by allegedly trying to compromise the military in order to satisfy selfish political objectives.

General Olajide had said at the conference that what the army had and which he displayed, were the in- formation contained in the forms Buhari filled at the point of his entry into the military and some letters of recommendation by Principal of Provincial Secondary School, Katsina State, ex- plaining that it was a practice in the Nigerian Army that before candidates are short-listed for commissioning into the officers’ cadre of the service, the selection board verifies the original copies of credentials that are presented.

The APC presidential candidate had averred in an affidavit he deposed be- fore an Abuja High Court that all his certificates were with the Secretary, Military Board, while submitting his form to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

But the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was also swift to respond to Buhari’s alleged result, claiming that the released documents were forged, manipulated and fraudulently procured. Addressing journalists few hours after the controversial result was released, Director of Media, Goodluck Jonathan Campaign Organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode, said one of the footnotes on the document purportedly issued by the University of Cambridge was that Buhari’s results in all subjects except English Language have been carried forward from the 1960 examination; questioning when exactly the APC’s candidate sat for all the other subjects claimed to have been passed in the Secondary School Examination.

Read also: Buhari: A tortuous road to the presidency

He said: “Having care- fully studied the statement of result signed by the “school principal” and an “examination officer” of the Government College, Katsina, as well as the attached document titled University of Cambridge West Africa School Certificate 1961, we wish to make the following observations and comments: “The more Buhari tries to extricate himself from the crisis, the more he stumbles into a new phase in the unfolding narrative of his obvious complicity in a matter that borders on perjury and which has called his avowed integrity to question.

We do not know who the authors and masterminds of this forgery are but whoever they are, we urge them to come forward and be identified. If they fail to come forward voluntarily, we hereby call on the police and other security agencies to seek them out, find them, arrest them, interrogate them and prosecute them in accordance with the laws of the land.

We reiterate our call on General Buhari to submit himself to the police to answer charges of perjury, having lied on oath about his academic qualifications. This is what a man who claims to represent integrity and due process ought to do in this situation”.

He further said had INEC not complied with the Electoral Act this year, which requires that it pastes the academic credentials of all the presidential candidates, Nigerians would have remained ignorant of the fact that Buhari has probably been submitting affidavits for the past elections.

“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.

This forms the fulcrum for the subsequent courses that he attended as he rose in the army, including the US War College. Failure to produce that school certificate implies that Buhari’s entire career in the Army was based on falsehood which cannot stand,” Fani-Kayode had said at the press briefing.

Nigerians, who spoke with BusinessDay were concerned about what they called ‘discrepancies’ in Buhari’s results allegedly re- leased by the Katsina College and signed by the current  principal of the school. A UK based Nigerian, Eliot Erannosijesu Aluge, who spoke to our correspondent on telephone from London, observed that the first name on the controversial result was Mohammed against Muhammadu as the APC’s presidential candidate is currently known.

He said: “Another issue from the result is ‘Katsina Ministry of Education’, which is very misleading too. Katsina State was created out of the current Kaduna State in 1987 under the military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida. There couldn’t have been Katsina Ministry of Education at the time. The structure was regional”.

He probed further: “How would someone fail Mathematics and admission is given to him at the time gaining entry into the Nigerian Military was very difficult because the British were very involved? Why is the name Mohamed and not Muhammadu Buhari? Has Buhari told Nigerians that he did a change of name and possessed an affidavit he swore to that effect? Nigerians should not allow this to be swept under the carpet as usual.”

Kayode Idowu, spokesperson for the Chairman of INEC, Attahiru Jega, was not available for comments when attempts were made at reaching him as his cell phone indicated that it was out of network coverage. But he was recently quoted in the media as saying “only the courts could disqualify the APC’s candidate” and that the electoral umpire was not aware of any petition so far