Re: What does APC have against educated people? by Dapo Okubanjo
NEWS DIGEST – The piece with the above title by a faceless hack writer is one that is clearly directed at casting aspersions on the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kwara state but it was also meant as a not-too-subtle dig at President Muhammadu Buhari.
If there is any doubt about the political stance of the writer, the reference to President Buhari’s school certificate is enough proof that he (or she) is a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) hack. And this is because that issue which had since the 2015 election being laid to rest has continued to give members of the opposition headache.
Only idle minds who have run out of ideas(and it seems there are many within the PDP ranks in Kwara state) would recycle claims that the likes of Gen. Alani Akinrinade, a former Chief of Defence Staff, have since rubbished by corroborating that the army authorities collected the original certificates of all its officers.
So if the army said they lost the certificates, does it mean that they did not exist or that the President did not go to school, sat for examinations and passed or didn’t attended military courses and War College?
And like a Presidential spokesman once said, does it change the fact that the President rose through the ranks to become a Major-General in the Nigerian Army and a Military Head of State?
But in all of these, what does the Nigerian constitution say about educational requirements for elective positions?
Sections 65, 106, 131 and 177 of the 1999 constitution states that a person must be qualified for election into the aforementioned elective offices if he/she “has been educated up to at least School Certificate level or its equivalent”.
This remains till date, the requirement for elective position so it beggars belief that the writer who was out to do an hatchet job either does not even know what the law says or they simply want to be mischievous.
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Let’s even assume that the persons targeted in the write up only had secondary education, how does that translate to tagging them as ‘barely educated’?
And if the intention of the faceless Lara Ali is to give the impression that a higher educational qualification translates to competence or better performance in office then let me be quick to draw attention to some members of his preferred party in governance.
Whenever poor governance is mentioned in this political dispensation, two states (one in the South East and the other in the North Central geo-political zone) are almost always mentioned and incidentally, both states are headed by doctorate degree holders but there is little in terms of achievements that could be ascribed to those governors that are in their second term in office.
Today, they are the butt of jokes by political watchers who wonder how their degrees have not translated to great performance in office.
And speaking specifically about Kwara state, is there really anything on ground to show the state once had someone with the type of ‘educational profile, the writer probably had in mind who spent 8 years in office and also installed a hand-picked successor also for 8 years.
if Kwarans were indeed impressed, they would not have handed him the biggest, all-round electoral loss ever recorded by a political godfather in the history of Nigerian politics.
And if ‘Lara Ali’ is a resident of the state, it may not be out of place to challenge him (or her) to go on the streets of the state capital to ask the people what those with big education qualification did for them while in various offices compared to those he (or she) sought to denigrate especially the Turaki of Ilorin,Mallam Saliu Mustapha.
My message to the writer is that this is not a time to hoodwink the people by seeking to sell intangible ‘big ideas’ through unscrupulous means. Kwara people including those in Kwara Central Senatorial district have long taken the decision to look in the direction of those who are prepared to put the ‘people first’!
Dapo Okubanjo can be reached on dokubanjo@yahoo.co.uk
