‘Buhari’s Certificate Saga, Worst National Embarrassment’

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the public opinion that the Presidency allegedly procured a forged West African Examination Council Certificate attestation and confirmation for President Muhammadu Buhari as a huge smear on the nation’s integrity and the office of the President.

The party said that the development had turned Nigeria into the laughing stock of the international community, adding that the President was allegedly being parodied as the beneficiary of “a duplicitous act.”

The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mr. Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement released in Abuja on Sunday, said that the President’s handlers had succeeded in dragging a reputable institution like WAEC into public disrepute and opprobrium.

He said, “A check on the attestation clearly shows that it does not have the original certificate number, the key authentication feature in all genuine attestations by WAEC.

“Instead, a non-applicable is entered, indicating that the beneficiary does not have a certificate to be attested to and rendering the said attestation unauthenticated, fake and of no effect.

“Also, the attestation is for the West African Senior School Certificate, which President Buhari couldn’t have sat for, given that the Senior School Certificate Examination was established only in the late 1980s.

“Does it not smack of a high level scam that the same WAEC, which, in 2015, confirmed that it did not have the records of President Buhari’s certificate, now had to send officials to present Mr President with an attestation that has no original certificate number?”