The Arewa Youths Consultative Forum, AYCF, on Sunday reacted to President Muhammadu Buhari’s inability to present his West African Examinations Council, WAEC, certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, as a prerequisite to qualify for the 2019 presidential election.
In an interview with Dailypost, the President of AYCF, Alhaji Yerima Shettima, said Buhari should be disqualified if he refused to do the needful by resigning over his inability to present his WAEC certificate.
Shettima stated that Buhari’s action was a bad precedence for youths who in the “nearest future” won’t pay much attention to education.
He, however, warned that the inability to deal with such a situation may lead to a total system collapse in Nigeria.
According, “It’s not right, what this tells you is that we are going to set a very bad precedence in the nearest future, which means that we are telling the younger generation that there is no need to go to school before becoming what they want to be and this is a total set back to us as a people and a nation.
“We were told Buhari is a man of integrity and as such, he should be able to convince us about his certificate and if there is no certificate he should honourably do the needful because this saga will send a very terrible signal to the younger generation who without certificate will decide to use whatever manner to become that they desire.
“The refusal to disclose his certificate is counterproductive and must not be encouraged. To me, I’m not still convinced that he doesn’t have certificate but to clear the doubt of Nigerians he should be courageous enough and do the needful.
“And if he refused to do the needful and tender the certificate, then that has totally disqualified him from being in that office for even a day, he should resign, then let us see now whether INEC has started considering people without a certificate to contest for political office.
“If we don’t summon courage now to solve all this, in the nearest future you will wake up and discover a total collapse of our system.
“In the nearest future, you can wake up to tell a candidate or an aspirant that he is not qualified to contest based on this document he does not fit the basic requirement and you set an example of what happened during the Buhari’s administration and what happened to the President then and what did INEC do. Nigeria is far bigger than any individual.
“Being a man of integrity that everyone knows him to be, I’m sure Buhari knows what to do, he is an honourable somebody that we expect should live by example so he knows the needful and what to do. I think we will mobilize and protest that the military release Buhari’s certificate so as to prevent all this unnecessary embarrassment.”
