Dada Ayoola | Asiwaju Media Team
Nigeria once again finds itself facing an uncomfortable truth, not about politics, not about party rivalry, but about records, accountability, and whether the law still has meaning when the subject is powerful.
The controversy surrounding the academic credentials and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) history of the Minister of Interior, Hon. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, has refused to fade because the contradictions involved have never been addressed. Not denied. Not clarified. Simply ignored.
At the heart of this matter is a conflict of records that cannot logically coexist.
Publicly available documents from the 2019 National Assembly election indicate that an SSCE (WAEC) attestation was presented as part of the Minister’s credentials. There is nothing illegal about this. Nigerian law permits the use of SSCE for electoral qualification. That fact is settled.
What is not settled and what authorities have carefully avoided is how, within the same period, the Minister was reportedly mobilised or remobilised for NYSC service.
NYSC mobilisation is not optional, symbolic, or discretionary. It is a statutory process that requires proof of graduation from a recognised tertiary institution. An SSCE certificate does not qualify anyone for NYSC service. It never has.
This creates a fundamental contradiction that cannot be explained away by political spin. One cannot, in the same timeframe, rely on SSCE as the highest declared qualification for electoral purposes and also meet the legal requirements for NYSC mobilisation. One record must be incomplete. Another must be inaccurate. Both cannot be true.
Yet, in the face of this glaring inconsistency, the institutions whose duty it is to protect the integrity of national records have chosen silence.
NYSC has refused to disclose the academic qualifications used to justify the mobilisation or remobilisation. WAEC has not publicly authenticated or explained the controversial SSCE attestation allegedly bearing an adult passport photograph. Other relevant authorities have offered no official clarification.
This silence is not neutral. It is consequential.
In a country where young Nigerians are denied mobilisation, certificates, or employment over spelling errors, date mismatches, or minor clerical issues, institutional quietness over far more serious contradictions sends a dangerous signal that scrutiny is not about facts, but about influence.
This issue has long outgrown the individual at its centre. It now speaks directly to whether records still matter, whether timelines still mean anything, and whether the law still applies evenly. When institutions refuse to speak, suspicion fills the gap. When suspicion lingers, public trust collapses.
Nigeria cannot survive on selective accountability.
A system where documents are rigidly enforced against the powerless but endlessly flexible for the powerful is not a democracy, it is an arrangement.
Even after more than two decades since Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo’s reported NYSC mobilisation, questions surrounding the authenticity and legality of that process remain unresolved. That alone is an indictment of institutional failure.
The remedy is neither radical nor political. It is procedural and lawful. WAEC should publicly verify the SSCE attestation in question and explain the presence of the adult passport photograph. NYSC should release the academic credentials relied upon for mobilisation in 2019 and remobilisation between 2019 to 2023. Any claimed bachelor’s degree should be transparently presented. Where inconsistencies exist, due process must apply.
This is not harassment. It is governance.
Until clear, verifiable records are produced, these questions will persist, not as partisan attacks, but as evidence of institutional compromise. And in any functioning democracy, credibility is not a luxury. It is a requirement.
