Certificate Saga: Why We Won’t Investigate Buhari –IGP

To Avoid Being Branded Partisan, The Police Will Not Conduct Investigations Into The Certificate Controversy, Currently Trailing APC Presidential Candidate, Major-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari

For fear of being branded partisan, the Nigeria Police will not conduct any investigation into the alleged certificate controversy currently trailing the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Candidate, Major. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, stating that the Force was unaware of the matter. The Police boss, who spoke in a telephone chat with our Correspondent from Abuja, added that in every case, there must be a complaint, which could be in the form of a petition or an oral complaint at a Police station, in which case, there would be an entry of the matter so reported in the crime register and an Investigative Police Officer (IPO) would be assigned. “But in this case (Buhari), there is nothing like that. Not one person has come forward with a petition to make a report at any Police Station on the matter.

So, as far as we are concerned, we are not aware of any certificate scandal.” But an inside source told our Correspondent that there was a petition to that effect against Buhari, with the Police. The source alleged that the petition was dated December 21st, 2014 and that the Police merely refused to act for fear of being branded partisan. Speaking in the same vain, the Force Public Relation Officer (FPRO) Emmanuel Ojukwu, in a text message to our Correspondent, stated that the Force was not aware of any certificate controversy against Buhari. “The Police are not aware of any certificate controversy please,” said Ojukwu. The certificate controversy which is yet to be laid to rest following the disclosure by the Nigerian Army that it is not in custody of the former Head of State’s original academic records as claimed and his refusal to provide the minimum academic qualification of the West Africa School Certificate in place of the affidavit he submitted to the Independent Electoral Commission, has gone viral on global media and become a subject of heated public debate.

However, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Suleiman Abba, said that the Force is not getting involved in the issue as a matter of discretion, not because it was afraid of anybody. He said: “Nobody is above the law, but we would pretend that Police is not yet aware of the certificate controversy against Gen. Buhari, until the Police is formally informed about it.” Meanwhile, addressing a press conference tagged “Why is INEC Involved in a Cover-up for Buhari?,” Director of Communication in the PDP Presidential Organisation, Femi Fani-Kayode, disclosed that Buhari did not also present any certificate to INEC when he was cleared to contest the 2011 Presidential election. “It has been brought to our attention that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), either by error of omission or commission, may be engaged in acts that do not, in every material particular, support the advancement of democracy, the rule of law and the strict adherence to the letters and the spirit of electoral laws in Nigeria,” said Fani-Kayode. According to him, the inability of APC’s Buhari to present even the minimum requirement of just a leaving school certificate “questions his moral and other credentials for pursuing the position of the president of Nigeria.

In its reply, INEC reportedly restated its earlier position that it is only the courts that can disqualify the former Head of State, while the party’s Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun said that it is laughable for anyone to insinuate that, Buhari, a former Head of State who rose to the rank of a general in the Nigerian Army had no school certificate. Buhari himself had kept mum, fuelling speculations that he possesses no academic but professional qualifications only, which is not what the electoral law requires to qualify to run for elections.The current shocking disclosure has brought to the fore questions regarding the qualifications that earned Buhari his entry into the Nigerian Army and his rapid rise to the rank of a Major General and subsequently the Head of State through a military coup that truncated a democratically elected government in 1983

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Source: http://theunion.com.ng/certificate-saga-why-we-wont-investigate-buhari-igp/