By Denrele Animasaun

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity.It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful,and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I don’t know about you, but this certificate thing is getting tedious. We need to move on to talk about what really matters; the future of Nigerians. GMB has come out and rejected claims that he did not obtain his school-leaving certificate and as we know, that prospective presidential candidates must have it as a minimum requirement to run for office. The government spin doctors are hell bent on diverting attention away from campaign issues such as unemployment, insecurity and corruption.

There is a saying that, I point to the sky and all you can see, is my fingers. We have got to be smarter than this, we were once people of integrity and respect, and surely, we can make up our minds and stop playing stupid. About time we seek the truth and not engage in the smoke and mirror cheap tactics.

In the last couple of days, The Nigerian Army spokesperson, Brigadier General Olaleye Lajide who addressed a press conference on last Tuesday to a frenzied crowd to announce that the army could not find General Muhammadu Buhari’s school leaving certificate in its records, has mysteriously been redeployed from that post. Quell       surprise! Even the Nigerian army have been brought into the melee.

So it was left to GMB to take a stand and tell journalists that he had asked his old school to make available a copy of the certificate showing that he had “passed the examination in the second division”. He went on to address the press.

That he only consented to address the issue because of the genuine concern expressed by many supporters and other well-meaning Nigerians. “Otherwise, I would have dismissed it for what it is – sheer mischief and would not have considered it an issue worth the Nation’s while. I had assumed all along that all my records were in the custody of the Military Secretary of the Nigerian Army. Much to my surprise, we are now told that although a record of the result is available, there are no copies of the certificates in my personal file. This is why I formally requested my old school, the Provincial Secondary School, Katsina to make available the school’s copy of the result of the Cambridge/West African School Certificate.”

He went on: “The issue in this campaign can’t be my certificate, which I obtained 53 years ago, the issue is the scandalous level of unemployment of millions of our young people, the state of insecurity, the pervasive official corruption which has impoverished our people and the lack of concern of the government for anything other than the retention of power at all costs.

I do not think, these people will be satisfied, with the facts as it is seems that he is an obstacle. When I was younger, we often say, silence is the best answer for a fool and I think at this point it will be better to address their hot air and chest beating to a resounding silence. Dignity deserves it and most of all, when one fights with a fool, people will fail to tell the difference.

As you see, now the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) campaign organisation has described the West African School Certificate result of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, as a “forgery.” Roll in the Spin director of Media and Publicity, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, who, declared the result sheet issued by the Cambridge examination body as fake, adding that it was superimposed on another document.

Fani-Kayode said: “The column lines on the part where names are printed do not align with the blank columns, while there is an introduction of extraneous lines on some other columns. “The document contains an obvious alteration on the Mathematics column of the candidate, Mohamed Buhari, who was assumed to have scored an “F” in the subject. And he said: “This raises a very fundamental issue of validity in view of the fact that the accompanying result sheet states that ‘any alteration or erasure renders this statement of Results invalid’. And he went on (he does like the sound of his own voice), “So what are our conclusion from all these is that the documents purportedly released by Government College (Pilot) Katsina, upon which the APC Presidential candidates hopes to bury the doubt about his eligibility for next month’s election are forged, manipulated and fraudulently procured. “They are 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.

“If they fail to come forward voluntarily, we hereby call on the police and other security agencies to seek them out, find them, arrest them, interrogate them and prosecute them in accordance with the laws of the land” So who made this man, judge, jury and executioner? We have always known that politics is dirty but in Nigeria it is on a different depth. The filth and disrespect that comes out of their political portal is shocking, it has become no holds barred. Sometime,you have to ask yourself how many mad people are in charge of this asylum?

Seriously, we need to put this to bed.Well, I have decided that for myself but people at some point will have to make up their minds. In the last couple of years the insurgency has killed thousands, maimed many more and displaced about a million. This government has failed spectacularly and it has negated its duty to its people. BH is a by-product of a damaged and kleptocratic politics and culture that has made Nigeria’s security unstable and that of neighbouring countries.

Nigeria spends $6 billion a year on defence and security yet its army mutinies or deserts as top brass milks the budgets leaving lower ranking officers ill equipped to fight or muster courage to compete with smaller neighbouring countries with better equipped and disciplined army. There is more graduates but little or no jobs, we have pockets of environmental disasters, systemic corruption, misrule, ethnic, religious divide and near ungovernable country. There is general apathy and state fed paranoia.

So what are they afraid of? Well, what are they not afraid of? If you tell untruths, then there is a lot to be afraid of. The scaremongering and spin is to convince some gullible people that Nigerians do not deserve better than this present government? We have become so ground down in the mire that some believe that the better the devil you know. There lies the problem; why the devil you know? Do the people not hold their future in their hands to pave a better Nigeria rather than one where crumbs are flung from the high table and for that people should be grateful?