Double Standards & Yusuf Buhari’s NYSC Discharge Certificate 6 Months After Cam | Nairalaw

By Dennis Da-ala Mirilla

Congratulations to corps members of the NYSC 2018 Batch A set
who passed out from the compulsory one year service to the
fatherland on Thursday, March 14.

Somehow, Yusuf Buhari, the son of President Muhammadu Buhari,
also passed out on Thursday, and this has gotten Nigerians somehow
confused. The photo of Yusuf and his cousin Musa Daura holding his
discharge certificate was shared on the internet. “Was it not in
November 2018 we heard that Yusuf Buhari started his service year?”
is the question that has plagued NYSC WhatsApp groups.

If Yusuf started his service year in November of 2018, he is
then a 2018 Batch C corps member, and should not be passing out
until October 2019. This sudden display of discharge certificate
has taken us a bit off balance.

The presidency or its spokesperson is yet to release a statement
on the sudden passing out of Yusuf from the NYSC scheme barely 6
months after Punch Newspapers reported that he had joined the
program. On the international scene, the president continues to
paddle the narrative that he is a “man of integrity,” and he’s
found lots of buyers. Media houses, including the New York Times,
seem to have bought into it. In an article by Dionne Searcey for
the New York Times, she wrote: “Nigeria’s election was in many ways
a referendum on honesty, as voters once again embraced a candidate
who held a broom at rallies, declaring to sweep away the graft that
has given the nation a bad reputation worldwide.”

The question we all must ask ourselves is: What integrity are we
talking about here? And why have does his son have to experience
just 6 months of NYSC while the children of the masses spend a
whole year?

But this is not the first time people in Buhari’s camp are
treated with nepotism. When Buhari became president the word
“whistleblower” trended every other week on social media platforms.
One of his first actions as president was to probe people who
looted funds from the country’s treasury. The idea of the
whistleblower was that anyone who could name a person whose wealth
was looted from the government coffers should feel free to tell the
government and would get a percentage of the money when recovered.
This action was publicly cheered.

Then a pattern began: many politicians began to join his camp.
It was rumored that when one joined his party, the All Progressives
Congress (APC), all ones treasury looting sins would be forgiven.
Those who opposed him continued to face his wrath.

A few years ago, when he was called out for not being fair to
the South East, compared to the South West and the North, this was
what he said: “When I won the election, I studied the amount of
votes I got from all the geopolitical zones. I said I got 198,000
from the whole South East which virtually any local government can
give me.”

If you paraphrase his statement, he had blatantly stated that
they deserved what they got for not voting for him. And now, his
son has blatantly taken pictures to show other youths of Nigeria
that he has gotten his discharge letter, despite not spending a
year in service.