Between Obama’s “Birthers” and Buhari’s
“WASCers”
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
I am by no means a Buhari enthusiast. But I’d choose
him (or, for that matter, anybody) over Goodluck
Jonathan, not because I nurse any personal animus
against Jonathan (I actually feel pity for him because
the presidency evidently overwhelms and
discombobulates him) but because he has the dubious
honor of being Nigeria’s most disastrous leader since
independence. There is no doubt that being Nigeria’s
president is way above Jonathan’s pay grade.
As someone who has followed America’s politics
closely in the last few years, I see uncannily
analogous parallels between the ongoing contrived
hoopla over Buhari’s school certificate and the
manufactured hysteria by the lunatic fringe of
American conservatives over Obama’s birth
certificate.
The conspiracy theorists who believe that Obama was
not born in America and is therefore ineligible to be
America’s president are derisively called “birthers,”
and their movement is called “birtherism.” I think we
should also call the whacky conspiracy theorists who
believe Buhari isn’t eligible to be president of Nigeria
because he supposedly has no West African School
Certificate (WASC) “WASCers,” and their movement
“WASCerism.”
So what are the similarities between “birthers” and
“WASCers” and between “birtherism” and
“WASCerism”? Let’s see.
When Obama’s previously lackluster campaign for the
White House gained unprecedented momentum and
the prospects of his triumph became an almost
inexorable certainty, his opponents hatched a devious
plot to call to question his American citizenship and,
thus, his suitability to run for the office of America’s
president. It started as hushed whispers on the
margins of the American society. Then it quickly
spread to polite society, and soon became the grist to
the mill of the American news media. A cottage
industry of conspiracy theories about Obama’s
putative Kenyan birth mushroomed in no time.
Obama’s campaign team initially ignored what they
thought was a preposterous, scorn-worthy distraction.
They thought the self-evident mendacity of the
accusation that Obama was born in Kenya was
sufficient defense for Obama. For instance, when
Obama was born, at least three Hawaiian newspapers
published notices of his birth. Microfilms of the
notices were published on the Internet by the
newspapers. Plus, it’s simply implausible that a
teenage mother would leave the comfort of America
and travel to Kenya, which she had never been to, to
give birth to her child and then return to America
after the birth.
When the whispering campaigns didn’t go away,
Obama decided to confront them frontally. On June 12,
2008, his campaign team created a website called
“Fight the Smears.” On the website Obama uploaded a
scanned copy of his "Certificate of Live Birth," also
called the short form birth certificate, which showed
that he was born in Hawaii. The conspiracy theorists
were not persuaded. They said the birth certificate
was fake, was digitally altered to mask its forgery,
and that it lacked the official stamp of the state of
Hawaii.
They said they wanted Obama’s original, “long form
birth certificate.” In 2011 Obama requested that
authorities in Hawaii release his original birth
certificate, which was uploaded onto the White House
website. But it didn’t placate the conspiracy theorists.
They still said it was a forgery.
Do you find any parallels here between American
birthers and Nigerian WASCers? In the past couple of
election cycles that Buhari has run for president, no
one has called his educational qualification into
question. He wasn’t a real threat. The social, cultural,
and political basis of his popularity derived from
narrow primordial confines. He was chiefly popular
among the people of the extreme north, whose votes
are not sufficient to win him a national election, the
cocksure confidence of his fanatical supporters
notwithstanding. But this election cycle is different.
Buhari is riding on

Soooooo on point and just like the birthers were shamed, the wascers are on their way to being disgraced. I learnt fayose has a very big mansion in ghana that he is planning to flee to.

while obama presented all his birth certificate to the electoral body,
Buhari did not do so with respect to his educational qualifications.
Any honest person comparing the two scenarios, would cease and desist once he or she gets to this fact.

While the birthers doubted the authenticity of obama's birth even when it had been certified by the ultimate authority on that matter: the Secretary of State for Hawaii,
buhari's traducers have been sent on a merry-go-round with frivolous support for his claims.
from secretary of the army board, who is no repository of educational qualifications to asinine statements that an unsupported affidavit meets the constitutional requirement for president, to claims that his engagement at the US war college is an equivalent to a masters degree.

Unfortunately for Buhari, Katsina College has released to the public, documents that have even raised more questions!
His tribulations can never be compared with Obama's who met his requirements at the first instance.
Buhari's claim that he is a general and so educationally qualified for president can be likened to Obama claiming that he is african-american and so obviously qualified to run.

We still wait for Buhari to clear all reasonable doubts by releasing a certified true copy to INEC.

tit:
[s]while obama presented all his birth certificate to the electoral body,
Buhari did not do so with respect to his educational qualifications.
Any honest person comparing the two scenarios, would cease and desist once he or she gets to this fact.

While the birthers doubted the authenticity of obama's birth even when it had been certified by the ultimate authority on that matter: the Secretary of State for Hawaii,
buhari's traducers have been sent on a merry-go-round with frivolous support for his claims.
from secretary of the army board, who is no repository of educational qualifications to asinine statements that an unsupported affidavit meets the constitutional requirement for president, to claims that his engagement at the US war college is an equivalent to a masters degree.

Unfortunately for Buhari, Katsina College has released to the public, documents that have even raised more questions!
His tribulations can never be compared with Obama's who met his requirements at the first instance.
Buhari's claim that he is a general and so educationally qualified for president can be likened to Obama claiming that he is african-american and so obviously qualified to run.

We still wait for Buhari to clear all reasonable doubts by releasing a certified true copy to INEC.[/s]

Wascer!

tit:
while obama presented all his birth certificate to the electoral body,
Buhari did not do so with respect to his educational qualifications.
Any honest person comparing the two scenarios, would cease and desist once he or she gets to this fact.

While the birthers doubted the authenticity of obama's birth even when it had been certified by the ultimate authority on that matter: the Secretary of State for Hawaii,
buhari's traducers have been sent on a merry-go-round with frivolous support for his claims.
from secretary of the army board, who is no repository of educational qualifications to asinine statements that an unsupported affidavit meets the constitutional requirement for president, to claims that his engagement at the US war college is an equivalent to a masters degree.

Unfortunately for Buhari, Katsina College has released to the public, documents that have even raised more questions!
His tribulations can never be compared with Obama's who met his requirements at the first instance.
Buhari's claim that he is a general and so educationally qualified for president can be likened to Obama claiming that he is african-american and so obviously qualified to run.

We still wait for Buhari to clear all reasonable doubts by releasing a certified true copy to INEC.

If you believe the affidavit he tendered not to be enough then go to court for interpretation of the constitution.

Continued.....


Buhari is riding on the crest of the fierce wave of
popular discontent against Jonathan’s rank
incompetence.
About the only places Buhari isn’t wildly popular are
the southeast and the deep south whose combined
electoral strength isn’t sufficient to deny him a
victory. So there is nakedly transparent panic in Aso
Rock. What to do? Well, enlist the news media—and
the social media— to, like Obama “birthers,”
manufacture a phony controversy over his eligibility
to run for president. Put him on the defensive. Say he
has no school certificate. Keep saying it until you
cause him to defend himself. When he does defend
himself, pick holes in his defense, however illogical
and puerile this may be. Ask for proof of his
graduation from a secondary school. When he
provides the proof, impeach the credibility of the
proof. Say it’s a forgery.
This strategy is intended to achieve two results. One,
it would slow Buhari’s ferociously rising momentum.
He is expected to be bogged down with trying to refute
the layers of malicious falsehoods they will continue
to throw at him. Second, by keeping the issue in the
news cycle up until election day, seeds of doubt about
Buhari’s education, eligibility, and integrity may grow
into rejection of his candidacy, especially among the
undecided.
But, like birthers in America, I doubt that Nigerian
WASCers can derail the unrelenting march of Buhari’s
momentum. I only hope that the Buhari campaign
team doesn’t allow Jonathan’s spin doctors to
continue to define the main conversations of this
election season. There are more pressing issues we
should be talking about than the “O” level certificates
of presidential candidates.
It’s frankly silly to obsess about the “O” level school
certificate of a man who not only rose to the pinnacle
of his military career but became the head of state of
his country. In all this, though, it is the Nigerian
military’s public statement on this issue that bothers
me deeply. When a national military that can’t defeat
a gang of domestic terrorists gets embroiled in dirty
politicking, you know you’re in really peril

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