Lawyers, Professor Pick Holes in Buhari’s Certificate, Tasks IGP

Addressing a press conference in Abuja, leader of the group, Dr. Amaechi Nwaiwu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria(SAN) said Buhari’s certificate presented by Government College Katsina was not original and that it was superimposed on another document.

According to the group, while he Buhari had credit in English, he failed in mathematics which was certainly a required subject for enrollment into the Nigerian Army.

It added that the University of Cambridge result sheet attached to the school result released by the Government College (Pilot) Katsina has an alteration on the mathematics column which suggests an attempt at concealment and called on the Nigeria police to investigate allegation of certificate scam against the general.

“The Federal Republic of Nigeria is a state based on the principles of democracy and social justice, sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through the Constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria as Amended derives all its powers belongs to the people through God. The Nigeria people have the opportunity of accepting or rejecting the men who are contesting to rule them.

“Nigerians have the right to ensure that persons contesting to rule them are qualified. Where there is an allegation of forgery, the Nigerian Police has the powers on a complaint to investigate, interrogate and prosecute any person found to have committed forgery of a document or committed perjury.

“The Nigerian Police under Section 214 of the Constitution and the Police Act has the powers and duty to investigate and prosecute such offences.

“We call on the Inspector General of Police to investigate, interrogate and prosecute any person upon a complaint found to have committed perjury or forgery of school certificate.”
Nwaiwu added that having relied on the school certificate, it has to be produced and not only a statement of result.

This is coming after a lecturer in the University of Ilorin, Professor A. A. Adeyinka faulted the certificate stressing that Hausa Language presented in the general’s result was not a subject of WASC examination when the general reportedly took the examination.

According to him, research, available at www.unilorin.edu, shows that prior to the emergence of a centralised government by the regime of General Yakubu Gowon from 1966 to 1975, all regions in Nigeria had different academic curriculum.

He added that it was only the Western Region that offered a local language as a subject in both their curriculum and school certificate examinations.

The university don said it was after a central government was formed and a universal educational curriculum was developed and adopted that other local languages were included in schools curriculum in 1974.

He listed subjects in the academic curriculum to include English Language, Biology, Commerce, Principles of Accounts, Health Science, Literature in English, Bible Knowledge, History, Geography, Yoruba, Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.

According to Adeyinka, Yoruba entered the academic curriculum following the recommendations of a Commission set up to review the academic curriculum for schools in the then Western Region.

“In the former Western Region, for example, both the Banjo Report (1961) and the Taiwo Report (1968) recommended the revision of the school syllabuses and the introduction of a new structure of education. The Banjo Report specifically recommended a new model for secondary education, comprising junior and senior secondary schools. The curriculum of the former should be comprehensive. This was partly the origin of the Aiyetoro Comprehensive School experiment started in 1963.

“The Taiwo Committee recommended that the primary-school curriculum should be overhauled and new syllabuses prepared in such subjects as Mathematics and Social Studies. Similar recommendations were made in the East (Dike 1959, Ivan Ikoku, 1964)” he said.