PUNCH
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, has played down the controversies surrounding the certificate of President Bola Tinubu.
He said the Tinubu administration does not have time to waste on the certificate issue, which he described as a “trivial matter” and distraction.
Tuggar, speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, said the President had met with other world leaders despite the controversy and the issue had not been a subject of discussion in all his recent international engagements.
“The foreign leaders that we’ve been engaging and the international organisations clearly are disinterested in wasting time on such.”
“We pay no mind to that,” Tuggar said.
He added that it was not surprising that the issue had been a subject of discussion in the Nigeria space, adding that former President Muhammadu Buhari faced a similar thing.
“There is a tendency to always try to distract and detain people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that.
“Nobody is wasting time about certificate qualification for somebody who has been a governor of a state, served two terms, and has been on the national stage as a politician.
“You remember that (former) President Buhari had to go through the same thing, where people were actually questioning whether he went to secondary school or not. Someone who had classmates, was the captain; and was a head boy,” he said.
According to him, Nigerians should concentrate on development.
Considering “the economic challenges we are facing – we shouldn’t be wasting time about whether some certificate, whether there is a T missing or an I hasn’t been dotted. That shouldn’t be our primary focus at the moment,” he said.
The PUNCH reports that The Chicago State University released the academic records of the President following a request by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who was the Peoples Democratic Party candidate in the February 25, 2023 presidential election.
