WAEC certificate: Vacate office now, PDP tells Buhari

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to spare the judiciary further troubles by resigning from office following what it observed as the official admission that he does not possess a WAEC certificate, contrary to his claims and disposition before the law.

Briefing the press at its national secretariat in Abuja on Sunday, the National Publicity Secretary of the main opposition party, Kola Ologbondiyan, who made the call, said the party has reviewed the video of the media interview by the Minister for Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and surmised that President Buhari should save the judiciary and the nation further troubles by immediately throwing in the towel and vacating the presidential seat.

A video in circulation in the social media shows Mohammed during the interview telling his interviewers that: “53 years after a fellow has left secondary school, 53 years, I think we should pardon him is he does not even know where he has kept it.“

The PDP mocked the Buhari Presidency for pushing out the video in which the Minister pleaded with Nigerians to pardon President Buhari over his false WAEC certificate claims.

The party noted what it said was the deliberate ploy of Mohammed to appeal to sentiments, seeing that the President had failed to defend himself before the Presidential petition tribunal.

It berated the Buhari Presidency for believing that in pushing the video into the public space, it could influence the mind of the tribunal to bend the law after solid evidence have been presented before it against President Buhari.

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The PDP spokesman added: “The PDP holds that the pronouncement and appeal for pardon issued by the government’s spokesperson, who is also a lawyer, is a direct guilt plea, which cannot save President Buhari from the course of justice in this matter.

“From the official pronouncement by the Minister on national television, it is no longer in dispute before all Nigerians that President Buhari does not possess the educational certificate he claimed in the affidavit he deposed to in his Presidential nomination form.

“In this latest shenanigan, President Buhari and his handlers ought to have known that the law, which the judiciary is bound to uphold, is a respecter of no man.”

The PDP reminded President Buhari of how his Presidency vehemently applied the law in a similar circumstance to remove a head of an arm of government; a situation, which it said rendered his plea for a pardon a complete nullity before the law.

The main opposition party posited that if President Buhari indeed was seeking for a pardon from Nigerians, he should do the needful by toeing the path of honour and vacating the Presidential seat without further delay.

Ologbondiyan further stated: “It is disheartening that President Buhari and his All Progressives Congress (APC) would put our nation through the troubles of legal hassles when they knew all the while that they were building something on nothing.”

The PDP, therefore, urged the Judiciary to consider the evidence before it and rescue the nation by expediting its verdict to point to nothing other than the justice of the matter in the Presidential election petition.