pdp wants perjury for Buhari

The Peoples Democratic Party has said it is not satisfied with the credentials of the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, and has threatened to contest the authenticity of his academic results. A top party official, who spoke with Saturday PUNCH on Thursday, said the ruling party would investigate Buhari’s statement of results issued on Wednesday by the Katsina State Ministry of Education. The statement of result and the confidential result sheet by the University of Cambridge were both dated January 21, stamped and signed by the Principal and Examination Officer, Government College, Katsina (formerly Provincial Secondary School). In the result sheet, Buhari’s name was the second among the 17 candidates that sat for the Cambridge/ West African School Certificate Examination in 1961. But the party source who does not want to be named, said, “The plan of the PDP is to contest Buhari’s academic qualification on two fronts. “We will first contest the APC presidential candidate’s credentials by writing to all the institutions he attended for the verification of his certificates. We already have individuals in our party that are doing that. “On the other hand, the ruling party will prevail on the Ministry of Justice to sue the former head of state for perjury.” The party official said Buhari had, in the affidavit submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission, claimed that his certificates were with the military, but the Nigerian Army denied that it had the ex-head of state’s certificates in its custody. “This means he (Buhari) lied on oath when he said his credentials were with the army. We are not going to take this from him at all. It is the job of the Ministry of Justice to look into this case of perjury and we are going to remind them.” Buhari had defened the affidavit he submitted by saying, “I had assumed all along that all my records were in the custody of the 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.” He said that was why he requested his old school to release his result. The Director of Media and Publicity, PDP Presidential Campaign Organisation, Mr. Femi Fani-Kayode, at a press conference in Abuja on Friday, also said a perjury case should be launched against the APC candidate. Fani-Kayode urged Buhari to submit himself to the police to answer charges of perjury. He said, “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.” Repeated calls to the mobile telephone number of the National Publicity Secretary of the party, Mr. Olisa Metuh, indicated that it was switched off. A text message sent to him had yet to be responded to as of the time of filing this report at 6:03pm on Friday. Attempts by our correspondent to also reach the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke, for his comment on Thursday, was unsuccessful as his phone was switched off. The minister had also not responded to a text message inquiry on the issue. The police however told one of our correspondents they would investigate the allegation of perjury against Buhari if there is a complaint to the force against him. The Force Public Relations Officer, Emmanuel Ojukwu, said, “There is no complaint before the police on the perjury allegation but if there is, we will investigate it.”. In his reaction, the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress, Mr. Lai Mohammed, said the party was not surprised that the PDP wants to contest Buhari’s school records because it is afraid that President Jonathan might lose the election. He said, “Let them go to court. The truth is that they are not ready for the election. They are making all these excuses because they are terrified they would lose the election.”