Oby Ezekwesili, a former minister of education, has lambasted President Bola Tinubu over his certificate gate, saying the president would have saved Nigerians what she called an embarrassment.
She stated this on Tuesday while reacting to the certificate scandal that the disclosure of Tinubu’s academic records with Chicago State University has caused.
Recall the school on Monday obeyed a federal judge ruling which compelled it from releasing all Tinubu academic records in its possession to Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the 2023 presidential election.
Atiku had applied for a full disclosure of all the president’s records with CSU in the opinion that it would help his court case against the emergence of Tinubu as president.
The president, however, argued that Atiku’s application to obtain the record for use in the Nigerian court was a wasted exercise as it was a pre-election matter that is now statute-barred.
But the former vice president believes his appeal at the Supreme Court contains certain prayers that need support and validation, hence his request to the US Court to obtain the documents.
The controversy concerning the president’s certificate, which has lingered for over two decades, according to Ezekwesili could easily have been avoided if Tinubu had done the needful by willingly making full disclosure.
“How so much easier it would have been for Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu to have saved the country and people the embarrassment of this Chicago State University – CSU court case by instantly and voluntarily asking the institution to publish his academic credentials!
“How difficult could that have been? How so less traumatic such exemplary disclosure to remove all doubts would have been for Nigerians,” the former Minister said in a statement X.
She lamented, “Like most Nigerians, it is profoundly embarrassing to field mocking questions on this matter that strikes at the heart of our National Integrity from foreigners.
“Our Public Leaders of a certain genre despise transparency and yet it is an antidote to fiascos like this one.
“As Citizens, at the end of the 2023 electoral process that follows the judgement by the Nigerian Supreme Court, our work is cut out for us to uncompromisingly demand a root and branch reform of the entire Electoral (INEC) and Judicial Systems (NJC).”
She vowed, “This is a must do.”
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