Not having a certificate can be to Buhari’s advantage

Some critics can’t understand why the President could not just present his 1961 WASC Certificate and end the whole certificate saga. Some wonder why he should use technicalities to delay the substantive hearing of the suit filed by Nnamdi Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe – the President has engaged over 13 Senior Advocates of Nigeria to argue over the manner in which he was served by the court.

Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe’s suit challenging President Buhari’s eligibility to run for the office of the president got a boast some weeks ago, when the Justice Ademola ruled that the President was properly served. This ruling was against the President’s argument that he was not properly served, and the President has since appealed this ruling.

Nwokocha-Ahaaiwe has since updated his original ‘prayers’ from what it was before the 2015 elections – this time he is asking the court to disqualify Buhari on the grounds of not having a WASC Certificate, which is a preliminary requirement for the office of president, and has asked the court to order INEC to withdraw Buhari’s certificate of return and re-issue a fresh one to ‘one’ Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

Yes, the plaintiff wants ‘one’ Dr Jonathan to be declared winner. Even though the plaintiff is a card carrying member of the PDP, he claims he has never met Jonathan and he was asking the court to disqualify Buhari as a concerned citizen, who doesn’t want the country’s constitution to be violated.

Had the APC been living up to expectation, this court case would have been seen as a distraction. It is actually one because no Nigerian court would give the plaintiff what he is asking for. However, if one of the plaintiff’s objective was to increase his visibility within his party, he might have achieve that.

But, the plaintiff’s argument can’t be wished away. Why is it taking Buhari time to present his certificate? Well, it also took President Barrack Obama about four years to present his Birth Certificate after he was accused of not been born in America, and hence not qualified to be the President of America.

Even if President Buhari retrieves a copy of his certificate from Cambridge University and publishes it, it will not change anything, for now. Why? In the heat of Obama’s certificate saga, in 2008, he produced a Certificate of Live Birth, which was a substitute for a Birth Certificate, and his critics weren’t convinced.

In 2011, Obama went on to produce the original certificate (Long-form), but some respected critics claimed it was ‘photo-shopped’. Then, people who believed Obama wasn’t qualified to be President comprised heavyweights like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In the same vain, even if Buhari produces a certificate today, it might not change much. There could be no way of verifying the authenticity of his certificate, expect Cambridge University does so.

Ordinarily, President Buhari’s examination number would have been enough information to verify the authenticity of his results, but Cambridge would not give this information to any other person, expect the President, who claimed to have sat for the examinations.

The fastest route to take would have been to get a UK or a Nigerian Court, if it is possible, to force Cambridge University to verify Buhari’s result using the master list presented by his secondary school during the last presidential election.

But, nobody would want to do this because it was all politics in the first place, and since the aim wasn’t achieved before the elections, the instigators of the suit have all backed out.

The whole certificate saga distracted Nigerians from real issues during the campaigns – we are now debating real issues we failed to debate during the campaigns – issues such as privatization, true federalism and the appropriate value of the naira.

It is in Buhari’s interest that the certificate saga is generating the kind of interest it is presently generating. This saga might distract from the main issues affecting Nigeria today, and when the President finally produces a document form Cambridge, his critics might have wasted valuable time.

But, some might wonder why the President should waste resources, and maybe time, arguing his certificate issue in court, when all he needed was to present one. Actually, the most plausible argument is that the President might have misplaced his original copy.

Even if Cambridge University finally verifies his results, some might still argue that Mohammed and Muhammadu are not the same person. So, whichever way you look at it, the issue will not go away anytime soon. It will even gather more momentum in 2018 – the aim would be to show that he is a fake person – that he is not as honest as he wants people to believe.

Well, it is all politics. Today, ‘birthers’, who argued that Obama wasn’t qualified to be President because of his Birth Certificate, no longer want to be associated with that argument. Similarly, the President’s profile might be raised after he produces another document, maybe in 2018 or 2019.