The ‘Who Certificate Epp’ Judgment?

I saw it coming, yes; I mean Atiku Abubakar the Turaki of Adamawa and PDP’s candidate at the last presidential election was wasting the emotions of his die-hard fans. Worse still, he was wasting the time of a tribunal whose mind is made up. In February 2019 as in the years before, there were real degree holders on the ballot, the electorate rejected them – saying – who degree epp? So, as Atiku’s fans prayed for a miracle last Wednesday, I bought me an extra large cup of coffee and tossed in a pint of ogogoro. The journey promised to be long, as most of the wigged in court have now found an unfavourable sleeping posture on Google archives.

A truthful judgment doesn’t require eight hours to deliver. Truth is usually not that long. The last time truth travelled in court, it wore Justitia, Lady Justice’s miniskirt – covering the essentials and leaving the rest to lurid imagination. Beautiful truth! On the other hand, deception and lies need all the padding it could garner along the way. Ask any facial artiste; it takes a longer time to transform Olanrewaju into Bobrisky.

With their judgment, I salute milords the learned justices for having the liver to make us stare at our reflections in the mirror. I wish Atiku good luck at the Supreme Court. Not being learned, what interested me most in the judgment was the area that the constitution did not state that Buhari had to have a certificate – i.e. proof of education. It only stipulates that he should have attempted or attended school. This is good news.

With their judgement, milords have officially given reasons why we need to apologise to many people. We would have to apologise to Salisu Buhari and hope that the young man doesn’t take us to court for wresting power from him with our heckling of his now famous University of Toronto degree. It wouldn’t matter that Salisu had not attended the mystical institution. If, like Dino Melaye who walked through Harvard and added a diploma to his educational qualifications, Salisu believed that he went to Toronto, he was qualified to anticipate his degree. For a school certificate holder, in the short period as speaker, Salisu held his graduate colleagues spellbound.

I would have said we owed Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Jagaban of ruining class apologies. He was fingered in a certificate scandal published by a defunct newsmagazine, The Source financed by Atiku in 1999. Atiku agreed to withdraw the edition from circulation, but the publication did not survive the scandal. Unlike Melaye who had his ABU convocation at the National Assembly with a rented academic gown, Ayodele Fayose did not succeed in getting the Polytechnic, Ibadan to grant him same for his fake certificate. Fayose needs our apology.

In the name of equity, Muhammadu Buhari should pardon and restore Obno Obla, even if it means adding inserting a caveat in the contract that he should never probe anybody’s forged certificate. Obla faked his life through the University of Jos to become a lawyer. The rest is open to the conjecture of his enemies.

What shall we say of Philip Emeagwali the celebrated father of the Internet? He has comrades in Evans Ewerem, Maurice Iwu, Osun’s Adeleke, and Andy Uba among those once accused of forging qualifications they did not have.

Who remembers the Amazon of the old Nigerian Stock Exchange? For years, Ndi Okereke-Onyiuke was addressed as doctor and professor. Farooq Kperogi’s investigative acumen exposed Okereke-Onyiuke as fake.

Our country has earned a bad reputation as the nation with many kingdoms. Republican societies now parade ornamented chiefs with titles that are as alien to their culture as to imagination. In most parts of the developed world, you can’t wear a babbar riga without people asking if you were a ‘Nigerian prince’. Once you say yes even if you were, respect flies out the window, as suspicion becomes your middle name.

Several quack doctors have operated on patients all over the national landscape, some not even having obtained their primary certificate. Both the penal code and the criminal code punish perjury but we are told certificates are not important; they are no better than papers with scribbled ink. As our Chief Justice would testify, even those who have ‘earned’ certificates could have them eaten by rats and cockroaches a phenomenon known in Yorubaland as – Oga mo paasi.

We have become a proud nation with respect for those who have made it coute que coute without a bother as to how they made it. That’s what miracles are made of. We are a miracle nation.

Parents send their children to miracle centres to beat WAEC/JAMB. They bribe teachers to get good grades for their children while the righteous burn the midnight oil to earn a degree. Those who bought or have degrees sexually transmitted into their hands find their position at the front of the job queue while those that earned their degrees wait for the job advertisement. The privileged fakes are employed in luxury agencies like the CBN, NNPC, NPA, etc.

Phantom ‘graduates’ escape the job queue and become big politicians. Even when they are rejected at the shambolic polls, they become ministerial nominees and members of boards of agencies whose actions guide the destiny of the rest of us. Two Buhari ministers of yore faked NYSC and escaped justice.

I agree with the ruling of milords – who certificate epp? I give kudos to those WAEC ‘officials’ who fly in to present Buhari with what he did not have. I agree with Lai Mohammed that we should forgive the commander-of-fibs for inventing his truth. Join me on my knees of prayer – may Naija succeed.