Certificate Controversy: PDP accuses Buhari of perjury; ...demands withdrawal from presidential race

The ruling Peoples Democratic Party in Nigeria has accused the presidential candidate of the opposition, All Progressives Congress (APC), retired General Muhammadu Buhari, of lying on oath and asked him to apologise to Nigerians and withdraw from the presidential race.

The Peoples Democratic Party presidential campaign organisation has expressed doubt over the recently released Secondary School Certificate Result of General Mohammad Buhari, the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate.

The party described it as a super imposition and forgery of documents.

Femi Fani-Kayode, Director of the Directorate of Media and Publicity of the organsation, expressed the doubt at a news conference in Abuja on Thursday.

He said the result, released on Jan. 21, after controversies surrounding Buhari’s academic qualifications and his eligibility to contest the presidency in Feb. 14, was a fraud.

Fani-Kayode said that rather than providing a conclusive proof that Buhari possessed the minimum qualification to contest the presidency, he went into a session of ‘blame game’.

According to him, Buhari is shifting what ordinarily ought to be his personal responsibility to his alleged old school: the Provisional Secondary School Katsina, now Government College, Katsina.

“It is unfortunate that the more Gen. Buhari tries to extricate himself from the crisis, the more he stumbles into a new phase in the unfolding narrative of his obvious complicity,” he said.

Fani-Kayode said the development bordered on perjury, adding that it had again called Buhari`s avowed integrity to question.

He added that the directorate had carefully studied the purported statement of result, signed by the school’s principal and an examination officer and observed that it was a clear super imposition.

“The result sheet which was attributed to the Cambridge examination body, is clearly a super imposition of one document on another,” he said.

He explained that the column which lined on the part where names were printed did not align with the blank columns adding that there was an introduction of extraneous lines on some other columns.

He added that the documents contained an obvious alteration on the Mathematics column of the candidate, Mohamed Buhari, who was assumed to have scored an ‘F’ in the subject.

This, he said, raised a fundamental issue of validity in view of the fact that the accompanying result sheet stated that any alteration or erasure rendered the statement of result invalid.

“Our conclusion from all these is that the documents purportedly released by Government College, Katsina, are forged”, he said.

He noted that Buhari could not use the result “to bury the doubt about his eligibility for next month’s election as APC Presidential candidate.”

Fani-Kayode added that the purported result was manipulated and fraudulently procured and therefore untenable in fact and in law.

“We do not know who the authors and masterminds of this forgery are, but whoever they are; we urge them to come forward and be identified.”

He called on the police and other security agencies to fish them out, arrest them, interrogate and prosecute them in accordance with the laws should they fail to come forward voluntarily.

He stressed that the issue was not about the PDP or President Goodluck Jonathan, the party’s presidential candidate, but about the integrity of who becomes the next president of the country.