By Mohammed Jibo Imran
On Saturday, December 12, 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari
shocked the Nigeria ’s
academic community when he went to Kaduna
State University ,
KASU and received an honorary doctorate degree (Honoris Causa) barely seven
months after his inauguration.
*President Buhari displays his award certificate
On the surface of it, one would be tempted to ask: is the president
being honoured for his records of yesteryears or is he being honoured for his
performance in the last seven month? If it is for his past records, the natural
question is why now and why by KASU? That university existed for over a decade,
why didn’t they honour Muhammadu Buhari last year or five years ago? If the
honour is as a result of his present assignment, what has he done this far to
earn him a honoris causa? Isn’t it a case of moral corruption for a serving
president, who has a lot of favours to dish out, accept to receive an
undeserved honorary doctorate degree from a state university whose vice
chancellor was, in the last six months, queried by the Visitor to the
University about three times?
Is it the case that, after the KASU formula, that
the president will not attend the convocation ceremony of any university unless
that university include the president as one its recipients of honorary
doctorate degree. How not, since over a dozen universities have held their
convocation ceremonies since the coming of PMB to office and he attended none,
it is therefore safe to assume that his failure to attend was because they have
not honoured him with a degree. These include the University
of Ibadan , University
of Benin , Obafemi
Awolowo University ,
Federal University Owerri, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa
University , etc. And none
of them received the respect of the presence of the president. Now that KASU
has shown the way, any university that wants the president to attend its
convocation should simply include the president in the list of the recipients
of its honoris causa. They are sure to have the president coming in person to
be decorated.
The
question is where is the shock? The president action is shocking for three
reasons. First, his receiving an honorary doctorate degree, from any Nigerian
University, while holding and elected public office is immoral, illegal and a
crass violation of the existing regulation guiding the award of honoris causa
in Nigeria’s University System. Section 2.0 subsection (a) of the famous Keffi
Declaration which was enacted on the 24th September, 2012 by the Association of
Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU) stated that: