I really sympathize with our President, His Excellency, Muhammadu Buhari. Why should the Nigerian military continue to mess him up, knowing fully well that Nigerians are very difficult people to please, that majority of them are Doubting Thomases, very hard to satisfy, even with all the best of intentions?
Imagine, each time our President wants to contest an election, they will come up with the issue of “bring your West African School Certificate”. He will tell them that his certificate was with the Nigerian Military, and will even back it up with a sworn affidavit. But the people will not believe him.
They will begin to cajole him, to make caricature of him, and to make all sorts of noise, in various media platforms, ridiculing our President, that he does not possess a West African School Certificate. What an insult, what an embarrassment!
We then ask: why can any sane person think or believe that the President of the Giant of Africa, the most populous black country in the world, does not possess a school certificate? Why can’t they trust or believe our President? Have they contacted the Nigerian military, to ask about Buhari’s school certificate and they told them that it is not with them?
You can imagine, one or two of these Doubting Thomases had the audacity of going court to ask it to compel our President to present his certificate. What a gratuitous insult! Who and who had ever presented their certificates in the court? Of course, our President did not waste time in shaming them by hiring as many as thirteen Senior Advocates of Nigeria to challenge them in court, and the idiots ran away.
In any case, what has possession of a school certificate got to do with the efficient running of the country, which our President is already doing? Those with very long certificates and degrees, what did they do when they were in power? Have they been able to perform better than our dear President, who they say, have no certificate? Of course no.
Don’t they know that all these long degrees and long certificates are just mere symbols, that they do not add much to anybody’s performance? That is why I practically support the present administration’s position of drastically slashing the budget for the education sector. Why will the government be wasting money in education when those who had already come out with long certificates, have nothing meaningful doing?
In any case, why should the Nigerian Military been holding President Buhari’s certificate, thereby making him an object of ridicule and caricature before the general public? Did our dear President commit an offence by volunteering to serve his fatherland in the military? After going through the rigors of serious academic work, sat all the qualifying examinations, and awarded the necessary certificates, the Nigerian military decided to hold his certificate. Why?
The other time, in 2015, when Buhari came out to contest, and they asked him about his school certificate, he told them that it was with the military. We promptly appreciated the situation, because the military then was in the hands of the “enemy”, his political opponent, and therefore, he could not access his certificate so easily.
This time around, however, the same certificate issue has resurfaced, and the President has come up with the same old story, that his school certificate was with the Nigerian military. As usual, he backed it up with a sworn affidavit.
We then begin to ask, why is the Nigerian military treating our President this way? Why are they holding his certificate? Did the man commit an offence by asking them to keep his certificate for him, or by serving his fatherland in the military? Have they forgotten that President Muhammadu Buhari is their Commander-in-Chief, and that he could mobilize his men and use force, if necessary, to retrieve his certificate?
But since we don’t want such a thing to happen, we want to sincerely plead with the Nigerian military authorities to please, release President Muhammadu Buhari’s West African School Certificate in the interest of peace. We are tired of our President coming up with a sworn affidavit in place of a school certificate each time he is told to present his credentials.
