The Peoples Democratic Party Presidential Campaign Organisation alleged on Thursday that the school certificate presented by the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), was forged.
The Director of Media and Publicity of the organisation, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, made the allegation at a press conference in Abuja.
He, however, added that the organisation had yet to contact the school that issued the certificate to either confirm or deny its authenticity.
But when one of our correspondents spoke with the school Principal, Mr. Isyaku Bello on the telephone, he said the certificate he signed was genuine.
The principal said, “If they are doubting the result, then they should come and see the authentic copy and not the photocopy sent to us by the Cambridge West Africa School.
“We are here waiting for anybody doubting what we have sent out. We are not running away. Let them come and found out. “
Nevertheless, Fani-Kayode still insisted that the document, which were released by the Ministry of Education, Katsina State and the University of Cambridge, was fraudulently procured.
He said those who authored the result must be arrested by the police and be prosecuted.
He said, “Our conclusion from all these is that the document purportedly released by the Government College (Pilot) Katsina, upon which the APC presidential candidate hopes to bury the doubt about his eligibility for next month’s election is forged, manipulated and fraudulently procured. It is therefore untenable in fact and in law.
“We do not know who the authors and masterminds of this forgery are but whoever they are, we urge them to come forward and be identified.
“If they fail to come forward voluntarily, we hereby call on the police and other security agencies to seek them out, find them, arrest them, interrogate them and prosecute them, in accordance with the laws of the land.”
Fani-Kayode also called on Buhari to submit himself to the police to answer charges of perjury, alleging that the former Head of State lied on oath about his academic qualification.
This, he said, was what a man who “claims to represent integrity and due process ought to do in this situation.”
He said there was no way that Buhari could extricate himself from the crisis, adding that the more he tried “to extricate himself, the more he stumbles into a new phase in the unfolding narrative of his obvious complicity in a matter that he claimed borders on perjury.”
He said having carefully studied the statement of result as signed by the “school principal” and an “examination officer” of the Government College, Katsina, as well as the attached document titled, ‘University of Cambridge West Africa School Certificate 1961’, his campaign organisation believed that the result was not genuine.
He raised the following observations and comments on the document.
The former Minister of Information said, “The result sheet which was attributed to the Cambridge examination body is clearly a super imposition of one document on another, as you will shortly see in the enlarged image of the result sheet as published. The column lines on the part where names are printed do not align with the blank columns while there is an introduction of extraneous lines on some other columns.
“The document contains an obvious alteration on the Mathematics column of the candidate, Mohamed Buhari, who was assumed to have scored an ‘F’ in the subject. This raises a very fundamental issue of validity in view of the fact that the accompanying result sheet states that ‘any alteration or erasure renders this statement of result invalid.’
“This is the standard practice in all interpretation of documents, especially academic records. The question we put to Gen. Buhari and his party is whether this alteration was done by the University of Cambridge.
Asked if his organisation has made any request to verify the authenticity of the documents, he said no.
Meanwhile, the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Organisation has said that it prefers not to respond to the provocations of Fani-Kayode, but rather engage him on issues that have the potential to bring the greatest good for the greatest number of Nigerians.
A press statement signed by Director of Media and Publicity of the APCPCO, Mallam Garba Shehu, on Thursday said it was laughable the PDP would not let-go of the educational qualification of the APC presidential candidate, even when the matter had been exhaustively laid to rest.
“It is not our desire in the APC presidential campaign organisation to join an individual who has a record of talking to please the moment on any petty issue. At some point in the recent past, it was convenient for Fani-Kayode to say this of the APC and its leaders: ‘What Nigerians need now is to join hands with the APC leaders, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari and Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu to move the nation forward. Today, Fani-Kayode sees no desecration in recanting that same position, just to satisfy his convenience.”
“The APC and its candidate are in this presidential campaign to discuss issues that will improve the standard of living of Nigerians and ensure that the people of this country are properly secured. Whenever the PDP and its presidential campaign spokesman feel ready to join us on this noble path, we will not be willing to join them on petty issues,” Shehu said.
He noted that these distractions are being promoted in order to provide a blanket cover over the shortcomings of the Jonathan administration in the areas of security, employment, war against corruption and infrastructure.
“Nigerians need no telling that all these distractions and provocations by Jonathan, the PDP and their cohorts are aimed at ensuring that they escape scrutiny over their score card marked by insecurity, unemployment and rampant corruption,” Shehu said.
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