Constitutional Amendment and Presidential Qualification.

 This abridged essay by Professor Ben Nwabueze is about how the amended section 131 (d) of the 1999 constitution, which would have made it mandatory for a Presidential candidate to have a post-secondary School qualification (HND and above), was surreptitiously amended to perpetuate illiteracy among Nigerians. Who did it and how it was done, remains a mystery. I know a lot of you don't read long essays or do not have the data to read long essays, so I had to publish only the relevant section.

Intellectual poverty and educational inadequacy of the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution (1999) for the President  

The political process in Nigeria does not entirely account for the intellectual poverty and educational inadequacy of presidential leadership. Part of the blame lies with the Constitution, section 131 of which provides:

  “A person shall be qualified for election to the office of President if –

(a) He is a citizen of Nigeria by birth. 

(b) He has attained the age of forty years.

(c) he is a member of a political party and is sponsored by that political party; and

(d) he has been educated up to at least the School Certificate level or its equivalent.”

As if the school certificate prescribed in section 131(d) is not inadequate already, “school certificate or its equivalent” is defined in section 318(1) to mean:

“(a) a Secondary School Certificate or its equivalent, or Grade II Teacher’s Certificate, the City and Guilds Certificate; or

(b) education up to Secondary School Certificate level (i.e. without the certificate); or 

(c) Primary Six School Leaving Certificate or its equivalent and -

(i) service in the public or private sector in the Federation in any capacity acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for a minimum of ten years, and

(ii) attendance at courses and training in such institutions as may be acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission for periods totalling up to a minimum of one year; and 

(iii) the ability to read, write, understand and communicate in the English language to the satisfaction of the Independent National Electoral Commission; and 

(d) any other qualification acceptable to the Independent National Electoral Commission.”

The provision says nothing about the person’s background, antecedents, experience, character, including qualities like integrity (the third Schedule, for example, provides that a person to be appointed a member of the Independent National Electoral Commission shall be of “unquestionable integrity”), sense of fairness, justice and impartiality, and of loyalty to the Constitution in terms of the Oaths in The Seventh Schedule, and his psychological or mental state.

In these days of widespread “expo”, certificate faking, and general degeneration in the standards of education in our schools and colleges, a primary six school leaving certificate is really next door to illiteracy. A semi-literate President is what the prescription in sections 131(d) and 318(1) tantamount to. 

No one with this kind of thoroughly inadequate educational background can be expected to read, with understanding, the Constitution of Nigeria, laden, as it is, with difficult and perplexing concepts, or the books on constitutional law, political science, and sociology where the knowledge of these concepts can be found. And knowing that he cannot understand them, he would have no inclination or disposition to buy the books or to read them.

The desire to accommodate educationally backwards areas, which no doubt is the reason underlying the provision, is no justification for prescribing such a low level of educational qualification for election to the office of President or the National Assembly. There is no state in the country today that does not have a fair number of university graduates. 

The effect of these provisions is, lamentably, to entrench in the Constitution the intellectual poverty and educational inadequacy, which has characterized leadership at the level of the presidency since Independence in 1960 right up to the election of President Umaru Yar’Adua in 2007 (the first university graduate to hold the office of President (discounting the interim arrangement under which Chief Ernest Shonekan, a graduate, ruled for some months) and the accession to the presidential office by the Vice-President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan on 5 May 2010 after the death of Umaru Yar’Adua. 

In my view, the Constitution should prescribe a university degree or its equivalent as the minimum educational qualification for election to the offices of President and Vice-President.

Whatever happened to the amendments to sections 131(d) and 318(1) passed by the National Assembly in 2010 at the early stage of the amendment process 

The amendment deletes the words “school certificate level or its equivalent” in section 131(d), and substitutes therefor “tertiary level and obtained the relevant certificates” (italicised to emphasise that the certificate is thereby made a constitutional requirement, thus changing the Supreme Court decision in Suswam’s Case). 

  It then goes on to define in section 318(1), as amended, the term to mean: 

 “(a) Ordinary National Diploma or its equivalent; or

(b)Nigerian Certificate in Education or its equivalent; or

(c)Higher School Certificate or its equivalent; or

(d)Advanced School Certificate or its equivalent; or 

(e) Higher National Diploma or its equivalent.”

  Each of the five qualifications is prescribed as an alternative minimum qualification on its own, e.g. higher school certificate or advanced school certificate, and is not made any less acceptable because of the inclusion of higher qualifications in (a), (b) or (e) above. 

  For this reason, although the higher national diploma is now generally regarded as equivalent to a university degree, the amendment falls short of prescribing a university degree as a minimum educational qualification.

  Significantly, however, the deletion of section 131(d) has the effect of also deleting the definition of “School Certificate or its equivalent” in section 318(1).

  I have not been able to find out how the amendment was lost at some stage in the amendment process, and never became law. This is, indeed, regrettable, since the country needs it.

• Professor Nwabueze, a constitutional lawyer and former education minister, is President of The Patriots.