Why I didn't charge Buhari with certificate forgery in 2015 - Ex AGF Adoke

Former Attorney General of the Federation, Bello Adoke, in an interview with the newsmen revealed that he was under pressure to charge President Muhammadu Buhari for certificate forgery in the run in to the 2015 presidential elections.


The issue of Buhari not having a certificate was a hotly discussed topic during the time.

“It is true that some people came to me and said Buhari should be disqualified because of certificate forgery,” he said. “As a man with fidelity to the Constitution, I dismissed the suggestion quickly.”

“Boko Haram was enough problem for us. I resisted pressures to compound the security challenges in the country by filing or authorising such cases to be filed on behalf of the government.

“I was not doing President Muhammadu Buhari any favour, I must say that. I was being faithful to the laws of the land. That was the duty expected of me. If you call that sympathy, so be it. But I didn’t do him a favour,” he explained.

He said he didn't yield into the pressure because he could not see a tenable case of forgery against the president at the time.

“There was pressure to issue a fiat to charge him to court for forgery. But I made my position very clear that I could not see any forgery at all.

“The law did not require you to submit any certificate to INEC and Buhari did not submit any certificate.

“The law only said you must have a minimum qualification of so so and so.

“Therefore, where was the forgery? If he didn’t submit a certificate, where was forgery? There is no police report, no investigation. No responsible attorney-general will issue any such fiat based on the record before me.

“But I could have been reckless if I wanted to be reckless. I could have been irresponsible if I wanted to be irresponsible. I could have issued the fiat,” Mr. Adoke said.

Going down that path would have caused mayhem and destruction in Nigeria, he said.