Congress (APC) candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, touted him as the man
who will emerge all-out winner in next week's presidential election.
His well-trumpeted moral high-ground was enough to drive his
aspiration against any other candidate. Not even the impressive list
of positive development indices from President Goodluck Jonathan could
match the solid pillar of integrity that Buhari flaunted.
Then the controversies started tumbling in. Week after week, the
Buhari candidacy has faced one scandal after another, leading to the
certificate saga that has brought a once-promising campaign to a near
stop. The well-oiled opposition campaign machinery, which once churned
out issues and facts that were to define the campaign, has since been
bogged down in firefights. In trying to extricate their candidate from
one self-inflicted scandal after another, chips keep falling from the
pillar of integrity on which his candidacy is built.
It all started with Buhari's health condition and his fitness to
withstand the rigours of the office of President. Against the
background that the last President of Northern extraction, Alhaji
Umaru Yar'adua, died without completing the first of his possible two
terms in office, the concern among Northern leaders over the reported
collapse of Buhari on the second day of his nationwide campaign in
Calabar, was understandable.
Buhari's shoddy handling of the finances of the Petroleum (Special)
Trust Fund during the regime of Gen. Sani Abacha is another scandal
his party is still trying to dismiss as inconsequential. Over the
years, the former military strongman has been hard-put explaining the
humongous amounts of money frittered away in the PTF under his watch,
the discrepancies associated with the award of its contracts and the
lopsided nature of location of its projects.
It has still not been possible to sweep it aside, which is why Gen.
Olusegun Obasanjo, who has since become more APC than the party
leaders, rushed to his rescue. Penultimate week, in an apparent effort
to clear Buhari, the former President who instituted the probe which
revealed unwholesome dealings and phoney expenditures in the PTF
amounting to over N25 billion, declared, rather curiously, that Buhari
is innocent of the various financial scandals that were unearthed
because he determined that Buhari did not personally benefit from the
sleaze. It was Obasanjo at his duplicitous best.
The question to ask is, must he be a personal beneficiary before he is
held accountable for profligate spending of public money? The PTF
cover up will, however, pale into insignificance when the certificate
scandal involving Buhari, is considered. The simple personal duty of
submitting his nomination form along with his personal details has
turned into the most confounding political rigmarole of all time. For
a man who has over the years been sold up as upright and painstakingly
meticulous, the hazy submissions about his certificates have turned
out a scandal of gargantuan proportions. It all started when he
submitted his nomination forms to the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC); but instead of attaching his West African School
Certificate (WASC) as required by law, he referred the electoral body
to the Secretary of the military board for them.
The Board has since come out to deny it was holding his certificate
and all manner of rigmarole have followed. In explaining the gaping
deficit in integrity, his campaign office has carried a bloody nose
for weeks; if their lawyer is not rationalising how the military rank
of general equals a school certificate, we are being inundated with
phoney and funny diplomas from military institutions from across the
world. When all of them refused to stick, the Provisional Secondary
School ,Katsina, which is now known as Government College, Katsina,
now remembers that it can issue him, in 2015, a statement of result
for exams taken in 1961. Incredible!
It is a school certificate that the PDP Presidential Campaign
Organisation has expressed doubt over, but which the APC Presidential
Campaign Organisation insists, brings the scandal to a close. For the
APC, that can only be wishful thinking, considering that Buhari`s
academic qualification is at the heart of his eligibility to contest
the presidency in February 14. It cannot be swept away so easily.
--DailyTimes
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