Arewa youths want Buhari disqualified from 2019 presidential election over WAEC controversy

This was made know in a statement issued by the President of the group, Alhaji Yerima Shettima on Sunday, October 28, 2018, according to Daily Post.

Constitutional requirements

According to LegalNaija, Section 131 of the 1999 constitution states that A person shall be qualified for election to the office of President if –

1.He is a citizen of Nigeria by birth;

2. He has attained the age of forty – years.

3.He is a member of a political party and is sponsored by that political party; and

4. He has been educated up to at least School Certificate level or its equivalent.

Buhari fails to submit WEAC results

Buhari recently did not submit his WAEC results,as required by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

According to reports, the President only swore to an affidavit claiming that his credentials are with the the Secretary of the Military Board.

According to Daily Post, Buhari’s affidavit reads: “I am the above-named person and the deponent of this affidavit herein. All my academic qualification documents as filled in my Presidential form, APC/001/2015 are currently with the Secretary of the Military Board as of the time of this affidavit.”

Buhari's certificate was issued in the 60s

However, The Cable reports that a former registrar, West African Examination Council (WAEC), Alex Ajayi, claims to have issued Buhari’s WAEC certificate along with those of Generals Sani Abacha and Ibrahim Babangida.

His words: “…I joined the West African Examination Council as a pioneer staff. I was the first substantive Nigerian Assistant Registrar. I took over the control of the examination from the University of Cambridge. I took examiners to Cambridge for training across 10 years and trained them in Nigeria. I had the opportunity of issuing WAEC certificates to three former Heads of State: Buhari, Abacha and Babangida in the 60s.”

Bad example

According to Shettima, Buhari will be setting a bad example if he is allowed to contest without presenting his WAEC certificate.

The AYCF President said it will make youths not pay attention to education in the future.

According to him, “It’s not right, what this tells you is that we are going to set a very bad precedence in the nearest future, which means that we are telling the younger generation that there is no need to go to school before becoming what they want to be and this is a total set back to us as a people and a nation.

“We were told Buhari is a man of integrity and as such, he should be able to convince us about his certificate and if there is no certificate he should honourably do the needful because this saga will send a very terrible signal to the younger generation who without certificate will decide to use whatever manner to become that they desire.

“The refusal to disclose his certificate is counterproductive and must not be encouraged. To me, I’m not still convinced that he doesn’t have certificate but to clear the doubt of Nigerians he should be courageous enough and do the needful.

“And if he refused to do the needful and tender the certificate, then that has totally disqualified him from being in that office for even a day, he should resign, then let us see now whether INEC has started considering people without a certificate to contest for political office.

“If we don’t summon courage now to solve all this, in the nearest future you will wake up and discover a total collapse of our system.

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“In the nearest future, you can wake up to tell a candidate or an aspirant that he is not qualified to contest based on this document he does not fit the basic requirement and you set an example of what happened during the Buhari’s administration and what happened to the President then and what did INEC do. Nigeria is far bigger than any individual.

“Being a man of integrity that everyone knows him to be, I’m sure Buhari knows what to do, he is an honourable somebody that we expect should live by example so he knows the needful and what to do. I think we will mobilize and protest that the military release Buhari’s certificate so as to prevent all this unnecessary embarrassment.”

On Friday, October 27, 2018, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced that 79 candidates will be contesting the 2019 presidential election, The Cable reports.