It is embarrassing that secondary school results obtained before adulthood is being used to argue about the leadership capacity of 60-year-old President Goodluck Jonathan, spokesman to Governor Kashim Shettima, Isa Gusau, said today.
Gusau said Jonathan’s spokesman Reno Omokri was wrong to have used his principal’s purported distinctions in the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations (WAEC) as template in gauging his (Jonathan’s) performance as deputy governor, governor, vice president and president.
Omokri had Thursday night said that Jonathan obtained seven distinctions in his WAEC and posed a challenge to Governor Shettima to produce his secondary school results for comparison of leadership capacity.
Omokri’s reaction was in response to Governor Shettima, who served as Chairman of a book launch authored by APC’s national Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi who wrote on Jonathan’s presidency.
"I just couldn’t imagine why Mr Reno Omokri chose to embarrass President Goodluck Jonathan by using WAEC result obtained before adulthood to argue about leadership capacity when in actual sense, those seven distinctions he claimed the former President obtained as a teenager, should have become evident in his reasoning and actions within the 16 years he served as deputy governor and governor in Bayelsa State from 1999 to 2007; and the years he served as vice president and president from 2007 to 2015," Gusau said.
According to Shettima’s spokesperson, leadership, intelligence and capacity were never claimed.
"They prove themselves. It is really a joke for Mr Reno Omokri, whom I thought was smart, to have even cited those results. If he must discuss academics, I would have expected him to discuss scholarly contributions from President Jonathan’s Masters Degree and PHD research works, with evidence of publication in any academic journal, to show how the former president is improving education from his works as an adult and not as WAEC-writing teenager.
”It is really a big joke to use pre-adulthood WAEC in discussing the capacity of a 60-year-old statesman and I will never support 50-year-old Governor Kashim Shettima getting involved in trading jokes. It is not in Governor Shettima’s character to boast about knowledge but should Reno insist, he is free to do a deep and factual reflection on Shettima’s handling of affairs in Borno State; he is free to talk to objective public affairs analysts and Reno is again free, to find out about Governor Shettima’s background from his secondary school, the University of Maiduguri where he had his first degree and was retained as lecturer, from the University of Ibadan where he obtained his Masters Degree or he can just ‘Google search’ to find testimonies of Mr Jim Ovia about Kashim Shettima’s records of performance at the Zenith Bank," he said.
Gusau reminded Mr Reno that Governor Shettima’s remarks about Jonathan had never been personal.
"Assessment on Jonathan’s capacity is a popular one from Nigeria and abroad and if Jonathan lacked capacity as most believe, Governor Shettima bore the most of that lack because his state, Borno, (which) faced the most difficult challenges and he alone knows how frustrated he might have been seeing that little was done to save the situation," Gusau said.
