History is replete with, and clear about President’s who run aground in the office. The first step downhill is that they confuse the destiny of their nations with their own. They exaggerate their accomplishments to give an image of a superstar. But it’s a facade, a deception. It’s all about playing fast and loose with the facts. All of this offers an insight about the nature and complexity of ambition. The good news, however, is that, in the end, what this deception does is reveal a leader’s true nature, his real identity. Simply put, that’s what power, acquired the wrong does. It reveals more than it can hide
The ongoing unraveling saga about President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and his academic record, should serve as a valuable insight into our national mood, an acute, but sad and horrifying episode, perhaps rooted in the conflicts of his childhood, which has plagued almost every step of his political ascendency. But now, it seems to have produced a crisis of legitimacy for Nigeria and sullied our national image and reputation, and indeed, for himself. It bears repeating that in all his political career, Tinubu’s background and academic records have been a major talking point. Even when he has achieved that fulfillment of his ultimate ambition to become Nigeria’s president, the circumstances of that ambition still inspires awesome guilt and doubts. As historians will tell us, nothing happens to people that is not exactly like them. In other words, the nuanced picture of a leader could not be different from who he truly is, no matter how brilliant he is packaged. You cannot mend a broken egg, is one lesson I learned in Public Relations and Marketing class, no matter the alternative reality that a legion of aides may forward to burnish a tattered reputation. For Tinubu, and all that has so far unravelled about his academic record, any keen and analytical observer will have noticed that his exhilaration in politics has almost always, accompanied by deep insecurity of self, the consequence of sense, which is deeply concealed from conscious or unconscious awareness, that his entire political career, the authority and awesome power he had hitherto exercised, have been wrongly acquired. The troubling impact that this has brought upon Nigeria and the sacred office of the presidency, will be his unedifying legacy, regardless of whether the Supreme Court admits or not, this damning evidence against the occupant of the highest political office in the land. It’s like that anecdote in the corporate world where investors who focus only on the income statement but fail to recognise the warning signs on the balance sheet. That, in short, is the trouble with the Tinubu presidency. It’s a sad story that he should blame himself, and no one else. Contrary to the vacuous assertion by his party, nobody hates him, not Atiku Abubakar, who has taken the exemplary courage to save Nigeria from itself, and perhaps the man in the mirror. At such a fractious moment that we are right now in Nigeria, where truth has become the first casualty, and critics branded as haters of the President and enemies of the country, the story of the President, reminds me of what Lyndon Johnson(36th U.S. President) said about the circumstances that brought him to office after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. “I took the oath, Johnson said, “I became President. But for millions of Americans I was illegitimate, a naked man with no presidential covering, a pretender to the throne, an illegal usurper. And then there was Texas, my home, the home of both the murder and the murder of the murderer… The whole thing was almost unbearable”. In Tinubu’s case, he brought the ‘unbearable ‘ saga upon himself. How did we come to this sorry, shameful and most embarrassing present? This saga predates the present disturbing moment. Recall that the departed, irrepressible legal icon Chief Gani Fawehinmi, blew the lid open on Tinubu 24 years ago. He went to court with his own evidence on the then Lagos state Governor. Gani was caught up with the immunity clause conferred on a serving Governor. He was talking about Section 137(1) of the Constitution that stipulates the qualifying requirement(s) a person vying for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, should have. In his opinion, Tinubu didn’t meet that basic requirement.
NEWSWATCH magazine(now rested) had in its edition of October 11, 1999, ran the story in its cover titled:”WHY TINUBU MUST GO”. Since Gani passed on, the case against Tinubu remains a recurring topic every election cycle. But former Vice President and presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party Atiku Abubakar, reignited this saga more than anyone has done in years. He pursued Tinubu’s academic record up to his Alma mater, Chicago State University. Every layer of this matter seems to throw up a more disturbing development. Atiku had gone to court to compel the school to release the president’s academic record to him to verify if they match the certificate Tinubu submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the February 25 Presidential election.
The President’s lawyers urged the Illinois Court in the U.S. not to release the academic record, claiming that doing so “will cause Tinubu irreparable damage…” That may be where Tinubu is now. Last Tuesday, the waiting game was over. Under deposition, the Registrar of Chicago State University Caleb Westberg, pulled the rug from Tinubu’s feet. It was like a bomb. Key point in his deposition under oath is that the Diploma(certificate) that Tinubu submitted to INEC was not issued by the University, even though he acknowledged that Tinubu was its graduate.
So, where did our president get what he submitted to INEC? Did he forge it? Didn’t he know the implications and risk involved? Is this not a man who had bragged about being a first Class brain, with glittering academic records? Why did he throw himself under the bus, with self-inflicted, incalculable damage to his own reputation and political advancement? Is he not aware that as President, he is the symbol of our democracy? His unconscionable, reckless behaviour is not who we are. Tinubu is his own private enemy. Unfortunately, he has dragged our country into disrepute. In the eyes of the international community, Nigeria has become like a sheep straying helplessly, with no shepherd to guide it. That’s why hope is fast fading in Nigeria.
No excuse, no explanation will redeem this damage that the President has caused the entire country and its citizens. In hope, he has given us hopelessness, pessimism has supplanted optimism. I find it infantile, and most disingenuous, the statement by the party dismissing the allegations against the President. To describe Atiku’s action as “nothing but pitful regurgitation of lies, mindless distortions and a deliberate falsehood…”, is the worst piece of Presidential faux pas I have seen in a very long time. This matter is not ‘trivial ‘, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs tried to make it look. If an issuing authority denies( as CSU has said) that it didn’t give the document that the President claims it gave him, that is a serious offence that must attract the most punitive punishment. Resignation would have been the only option, but that will be strange in our clime. He won’t. Neither will the National Assembly have the ‘ball’ to initiate any impeachment process.
Alternative facts should not be allowed to take over the political space. It is sad that truth has become transactional in Nigeria, but truth is constant. As Dr Oby Ezekwesili and Osita Chidoka said, Tinubu should have saved our country from this national embarrassment . As Ezekwesili puts it, that would have been less traumatic and exemplary”. “How difficult could that have been”, she asked?. Well, that is not in his character. Tinubu should know that he is not the only high-profile person caught in the web of academic impropriety.
President Joe Biden had previously come under fire for exaggerating his academic record, saying at one point that he graduated in the top half of his Law class at Syracuse University in New York, and that he graduated with three degrees instead of two. He apologized for the claims in 1987. Only recently, American congressman George Santos, elected last November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, had claimed that he earned degrees from Baruch College and New York University. Like in Tinubu’s case, school officials said they had no record of Santos’ record. He later owned up he had not earned the degrees at all. We should not turn our heads the other way when our laws are flouted, or be frightened to speak the truth when those who govern us lied about their accomplishments. Democracy dies when we condone evil.