Yusuf Tuggar, Minister of Foreign Affairs, has downplayed the concerns surrounding President Bola Tinubu’s certificate.
He claimed that the Tinubu administration does not have time to expend on the certificate problem, which he called a “trivial matter” and a diversion.
Tuggar said on Channels Television’s program on Wednesday that despite the uproar, the President had met with other foreign leaders and that the issue had not come up in any of 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 went on to say that it was not surprise that the topic has sparked debate in Nigeria, noting that former President Muhammadu Buhari faced a similar situation.
“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.
Nigerians, he believes, should focus 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.
