Just when one thought that President Muhammadu Buhari’s school certificate scandal could end up like the good, old nursery rhyme, “For want of a nail,” something dramatic and Nollywood-like happened. The West African Examination Council, which had never issued anybody with an attestation certificate, but would rather want you to get the master list of the result with your name endorsed by your school principal, broke with tradition and excitedly issued Buhari an attestation certificate. Though no one saw that coming, this was one of the turns and twists of our country which proves right the saying in Kenya; “if you are going to be stranded anywhere in the world have a Nigerian handy and you can be sure he would find a way out.”
Here is the poem, in case you belong to the Buhari generation or you are close to it and you have forgotten where you kept your certificates and your nursery rhymes:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the message was lost.
For want of a message the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Of course there is no reason to believe that for want of a School Certificate, the battle for the presidency would have been lost. Buhari was elected and ruled for four years without any semblance of a school certificate. When it became an issue he hired fourteen senior advocates of Nigeria to defend him in court. Where was the West African Examination Council then? Of course the body was still searching all over the world for the records of Buhari. It had stated in 2015 that it could not find Buhari’s records, but simply because you could not find a wife in 2015 does not mean that you could not find a suitor in 2018. Times change and sometimes people change times.
While the West African Examination Council was busy in “courtship and dating,” Nigerians were told that Buhari’s certificates were with the military. The military, we were made to believe, “commandeered” his certificates (like they used to commandeer women and materials during the war) and left the general “certificate-less.” It was a sad story, and just when we were about to cry on his behalf, the Army responded that Buhari did not join the army with a school certificate. They claimed that at that time you could join the army with just the reference from your principal without taking the school certificate. So that about proved that Buhari had lost track of where his certificate was. Not a surprise given that he once lost track that there was no West Germany in this century, and that Germany had no President Michele. He even forgot that he promised to par the Naira with the Dollar within a year, clear up the Boko Haram mess within three months, and pay unemployment allowances. It is human to forget and divine to forgive.
However, while the Army claimed that Buhari did not need a school certificate to join the army in those days and become the commander-in-chief of the army through attending courses and developing capacity, Buhari himself contradicted the army. Says Femi Adeshina, when Santa Claus (WAEC) showed up with the President’s improvised certificate, “It would have been impossible for him to attend the Defense Services Staff College in India in 1973 and the United States Army War College thereafter, as a Nigerian military officer, if he did not sit for the WASC Examination in 1961.”
Out of the blues, without anybody giving us a hint that a request had been made for an attestation letter from the West African Examination Council, an attestation letter came – unsolicited – from the West African Examination Council. This was a Santa Claus act and Santa Claus only shows up at Christmas time. So what happened? Please keep this to yourself. Ever since the discovery of quinine as the cure for malaria, no discovery has excited the West African Examination Council than this scientific discovery. Miracles, like they say, would never cease. And as you know, this attestation certificate contained a lot of miracles.
You do not know how many staff were involved in the certificate-hunt and how much ground were covered. It may have been the greatest (and certainly longest search) for the certificate of one man in the chequered history of mankind. So when the certificate was finally found buried somewhere in the sand dunes of Bar Beach or flying in the outer rings of Saturn, the body had an Eureka moment and giggling like kids had to rush and present the certificate before it got lost again. Now they can sit down and decorate the man who did the find and write his name down in the hall of fame of great inventors and discoverers.
The miracle deserves special mention in the Guinness Book of Records as a proof that where there is a determination there is a certificate. I have already begun to make contacts for a search for my certifications as a medical doctor. Though I have never studied medicine, I am sure that if it were in WAEC’s hands, they would have come up with some kind of attestation. The President Buhari’s attestation certificate was for Senior Secondary School Certificate. Another miracle! Well in my time, when I took the West African School Certificate in late 70’s, it was just the West African School Certificate. The stuff about Senior Secondary School was not there as it came later. But all the same Buhari appears to have lumped into the modern era and his attestation seems to imply that he attended Junior Secondary and Senior Secondary in 1961. The lucky man. So here is a toast to the Attestatation Certificate and the President, though they do not intend to plead it at INEC.
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