Finally, Buhari is Right about Something!

Of the 6 years of Buhari’s presidency, he’s never made a truer statement than the one he recently made at the Global Education Summit in London. I quote, “You can’t succeed outside your educational qualification”. Making this statement, he probably didn’t think it’d have a boomerang effect and identify him as an anomaly. This just brings to the fore the question:

why is someone whose School Certificate was once in contention the president of such a complex and problem laden country such as Nigeria?

With a president possessing merely a School Certificate, have we not brought the bar so low that any unskilled and poorly educated person is encouraged and given the impetus to seek election to the highest office in Nigeria? What economic strategy, social skills or law-making knowledge could have such a person earned at the School Certificate level to be able to govern a nation?

In this current administration, the farce is worsened by the fact that the vice president is a professor of law and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, yet he receives instructions and is delegated duties by a person possessing a mere School Certificate.

Some may come forward with the argument that the president has access to the best team of experts advising him on issues, but this argument is flawed on the ground that one has to have at least a whiff of knowledge on a matter to fully grasp the advice being dished out. This explains all the hasty executive orders that have been given in the past few years that have been detrimental to Nigeria and the economy.

Case in point: the closure of the Nigerian border for almost a year contrary to the ECOWAS treaty.

Another group of sympathizers might come from the angle of the archaic 1999 constitution which by Section 131 gives the academic qualification for the office of the presidency to be a School Certificate. This might be true, but the current constitution of Nigeria poorly reflects the state of the society. The irony of Nigeria lies in the fact that teachers, accountants, lawyers, bankers and most other white-collar jobs require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree to qualify for application but the most powerful and tasking office of the land, the presidency requires a minimum of School Certificate.