Will Benjamin Kalu Go the Way of Buhari, Adeosun, Nnaji, Others?

By Suleiman Alasa

Salisu Buhari was thirty years old in 1999, or so he claimed. He had just become Speaker of the House of Representatives, the fourth most powerful position in the country, and Nigerians were ready to believe in him. He was young, articulate, and seemed to represent everything that had been missing during the long years of military rule. Then someone at The News Magazine decided to check his story.

They discovered he was actually twenty-nine, which meant he was too young to sit in the House. They discovered he had claimed to graduate from the University of Toronto, and that the university had never heard of him. They discovered his NYSC records could not be found. For weeks, Buhari fought back. He threatened to sue the magazine. He called the allegations a witch hunt. He insisted that due process must be followed. But when Toronto University’s response arrived in writing, confirming that he had never been a student there, the game was up. He resigned on national television and disappeared from public life.

Kemi Adeosun tried the same strategy nearly twenty years later. She was Finance Minister, one of the most powerful women in government under the President Buhari’s administration, when a news report revealed that her NYSC exemption certificate did not exist. She had claimed exemption based on studying in the UK, but the rules required documentation she could not produce. She denied everything. She attacked the journalists. She insisted her appointment had been properly vetted. Then the pressure became too much, and she fled to London, resigning by letter rather than face the music at home.

Uche Nnaji followed the script more recently. He was Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology until last year. PREMIUM TIMES published an investigation showing he never graduated from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He failed a course called Virology in 1985 and never retook it. His name was not on the graduation list. Yet he had submitted a degree certificate dated 1985 to the President and the Senate. Nnaji did what the others had done. He denied everything. He filed a lawsuit to block the university from releasing his records. He accused the vice-chancellor of political manipulation. He waited, hoping the noise would die down. Then a federal government panel confirmed the findings, and he resigned three days later.

There is a familiar rhythm to these things. A man rises to high office. For a while, no one asks too many questions. Then someone does. The questions are simple, the kind that should have easy answers if everything is above board. But the answers do not come. Instead, there is indignation, accusations of political motivation, demands that due process be allowed to run its course. There is always hope that the public will lose interest, that the next scandal will push this one aside. Sometimes it works. Other times, the questions do not go away, and the silence becomes its own kind of answer. That is when the fall comes.

Benjamin what you doing now is dangerous not giving too much stress Kalu, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, now finds himself in that same place. The questions about him have circulated for years, whispered in legislative corridors and debated on social media. But they were laid out in public on Friday 6th of March, 2026 by a coalition of civil society groups before more than thirty media houses in Abuja. He did not anticipate this.

The questions are straightforward. In 2010, a man named Benjamin Okezie Osisiogu applied to the Nigerian Law School. That man is now Benjamin Okezie Kalu. On April 23, 2010, he swore an oath as part of that application: “I am not and will not be engaged in any employment nor serve in the National Youth Service Corps during the period of my course at the Nigerian Law School.”

His NYSC discharge certificate, number A001773067, was issued on March 8, 2011. It certifies that he completed his service year from March 9, 2010 to March 8, 2011.

So the service year began two weeks before he swore he would not serve during Law School. The service year ended the same month he would have been completing his studies. The two timelines do not just overlap; they are almost perfectly aligned. And the Nigerian Law School, as anyone who has been there knows, does not allow students to serve in the NYSC during their course of study. The rules are strict, the attendance requirements are demanding, and the idea of a student simultaneously serving as a corps member somewhere else while attending lectures and writing exams is not just unlikely. It is impossible.

How did he do it? How did Benjamin Kalu manage to be in two places at once? How did he keep an oath that forbade NYSC service while holding a certificate that proves he served? How did he navigate the contradiction between the Law School’s requirements and the NYSC’s demands?

These are not trick questions. They are not political attacks. They are questions rooted in documents that Kalu himself signed, oaths he himself swore, certificates he himself submitted to become a lawyer and to hold public office.

His office issued a response the same day. It was the kind of statement we have seen many times before.

The response described the allegations as speculative and politically motivated. It insisted they were unproven claims that no competent authority has substantiated. It reminded everyone that Kalu was called to the Bar in 2011 and that no court or disciplinary body has ever invalidated his qualification. It invoked the presumption of innocence and demanded that due process be allowed to run its course.

All of this is true, but it is also a way of changing the subject. A petition is not a conviction, and an allegation is not proof. But the civil society groups did not claim to have secured a conviction. They presented documents and asked questions based on those documents. They asked the NYSC to clarify whether Kalu actually served. They asked the Law School to release his attendance records. They asked Kalu himself to provide proof that he did not do the impossible.

The response from his office answers none of this. It does not provide his NYSC records. It does not provide his Law School attendance register. It does not explain how a man swore on April 23, 2010 that he would not serve in the NYSC during Law School, yet holds a discharge certificate for a service year that began two weeks earlier. It does not address the overlap. It does not address the oath. It does not address the certificate.

Instead, it makes claims that cannot be verified. It says previous verification exercises confirmed the validity of his NYSC certificate. Which exercises? Conducted by whom? What documents were examined? No answers. It says similar accusations were raised in 2023 and dismissed in legal proceedings. Which proceedings? Which court? What judgment? Silence. It says Kalu has never forged any credentials or falsified any official record. This is an assertion, not proof. It is what a man says when he has no documents to show.

The most striking thing about the response is what it leaves out. It leaves out the documents that would settle this matter once and for all. It leaves out the attendance registers that would show whether he was at the Law School during the months he was supposedly serving. It leaves out the NYSC records that would confirm his posting and participation. It leaves out any explanation of how the impossible became possible.

Instead, it asks Nigerians to wait. It asks them to trust institutions that have so far shown no urgency to act. It asks the public to be patient while the machinery of due process grinds forward, assuming it grinds at all. But patience, in cases like this, is exactly what powerful men ask for when they have something to hide.

Think about the men and women who came before. Salisu Buhari asked for patience while he threatened to sue the magazine that exposed him. Kemi Adeosun asked for patience while she insisted her appointment had been properly vetted. Uche Nnaji asked for patience while he filed a lawsuit to block the university from releasing his records. In each case, patience would have served only to delay the inevitable, to give them more time to strategize, to wait for the public to lose interest and move on.

This is not to say that Kalu is guilty. It is possible there is an explanation for the conflicting timelines. It is possible the documents can be reconciled. It is possible the impossible can be made possible with the right evidence. But if such an explanation exists, he has not provided it. He has not opened his records. He has not shown Nigerians how a man can be in two places at once.

What he has done is what powerful men always do when the questions become uncomfortable. He has attacked the messengers. He has questioned their motives. He has accused them of playing politics. He has wrapped himself in the language of due process and demanded that everyone wait for institutions to act. And while the nation waits, he remains in office, presiding over the House of Representatives, with questions hanging over his head that would have ended the career of any ordinary citizen long ago.

This is the real cost of cases like this. It is not just about one man’s credentials. It is about what we tolerate as a country. It is about the message we send to every young Nigerian who struggles through school, who plays by the rules, who serves their country honestly, who watches powerful men cut corners and wonders why they bothered being honest. It is about whether we believe the rules apply to everyone, or whether we have quietly accepted that they apply only to those without power.

The civil society groups have done what the institutions should have done. They have gathered the evidence, laid out the timeline, and demanded answers. They have asked the NYSC to clarify whether Kalu actually served. They have asked the Law School to release his attendance records. They have asked Kalu himself to provide proof that he did not do the impossible. These are not unreasonable demands. They are basic due diligence, multiplied by the importance of the office he holds.

Now the ball is in his court. He can continue to dance and dodge and demand that the public wait for institutions that show no signs of acting. Or he can do what honour demands. He can open his records. He can answer the questions. He can let the truth speak for itself, whatever that truth may be.

If his records are clean, he has nothing to fear. If they are not, he has no business occupying the sixth highest office in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Suleiman Alasa wrote from Abuja