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By John Azu
A newspaper columnist, Iliyasu Gadu, has called for an interrogation of President Bola Tinubu’s eligibility to contest the 2027 presidential election based on the constitutional requirement for school certificate.
In a video post on Tuesday, Gadu said Section 6, Part 1 section 131(d) of the Nigerian Constitution of 1999 provides that to be qualified for president, the individual must have been educated up to school certificate.
Gadu said the matter of Tinubu’s high school qualification was swept under the carpet in the lead up to the 2023 general elections because of the legal semantics that greeted the controversy, but the issue has not been resolved because the president has not provided any evidence of his primary and secondary school education.
“Up till this moment, he has not been able to say anything concrete about his qualifications to be in that position; we are not aware that he attended any primary school whether in Osun, Ibadan or Lagos, all the schools he claimed to have attended have been found to be non-existent, even the school that he claimed to have attended in 1970 was found to be a school that was set up in 1974, so it did not exist,” he said.
The columnist said the constitutional issue ought to be addressed by the president as the information is very important to ensure that somebody who is occupying the office of the president is not a usurper.
He said overriding the constitutional provision has resulted in taking the country for a ride as the laws which have passed through the National Assembly such as tax and budget laws were being abused against the Nigerian people.
“If we allow him to be part in the 2027 election, that is against the Nigerian constitution, and we must abide by the rules of the 1999 Constitution, we must not bend the rules for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he must be called to account on what he really is in the scheme of things in Nigeria, otherwise that election that is going to hold is going to be ultra vires the constitution,” he said.
“I want to put this across to Nigerians that if they want to practice democracy in Nigeria or they want to practice convenience for one man, it is up to them,” he added.