2015 polls: I refused to release my WAEC to please my traducers — Buhari

Former President, Muhammadu Buhari said he had deliberately refused to release his West African School Certificate (WASC) despite the political hullabaloo that greeted his high school leaving certificate in the build-up to the 2015 general elections.

Sometime in 2018, according to him, “I was going through a drawer and saw copies of my certificate. I always had it, but refused to release it, so that those venting spleen on it could please themselves,” Buhari was quoted as saying in chapter 5 of a book authored by his former media adviser, Femi Adesina.

The book: Working with Buhari – Reflections of Special Adviser, Media & Publicity (2015-2023) launched recently in Abuja, gave insights into Buhari’s leadership and the challenges faced during his tenure.

Recalling when the WAEC Registrar alongside his officials came to present the attestation certificate to Buhari in November 2018, Adesina quoted Buhari as saying: “It would have been impossible for me to attend the Defence Services Staff College, India (1973) and thereafter, United States Army War College, as a Nigerian military officer, if I didn’t sit for the WASC examinations in 1961,” Buhari said.

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He recounted that during his high school days, it was very difficult to commit examination fraud, even though it was not impossible.

Buhari further said: “At the event my colleagues and I who spent close to nine years in boarding school both in primary and secondary, including Gen. Musa Yar’adua, when we intended to join the military we had to take a military examination.

“We were examined in three subjects, English, Mathematics, and General Knowledge because English is the language for general instruction throughout the country because of our colonial heritage.

“Mathematics in the military was necessary, coupled with Geography. We were trained how to be dropped off in the bush, given only a pair of compasses and since we’re not astronomers, we’ve to learn to find our way, calculate, using the Pythagoras Theorem and others to work out our position,” Buhari added.