July 31, (THEWILL) – There was an uproar on Monday, at the Senate special plenary session for the screening of President Bola Tinubu’s ministerial nominees when Prof. Joseph Terlumun Utsev, the nominee from Benue State, said he started his primary education at the age of four.
Earlier, while introducing himself, Prof Utsev said he was born in Gboko, Benue State on December 2, 1980, and he attended the University of Agriculture, Makurdi, where he studied Civil Engineering and graduated with a Second Class Upper in 2004.
Utsev said he observed the mandatory one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Kaduna, in 2006.
The Professor of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering said he bagged his Master’s Degree from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 2007 and further bagged a doctorate degree from the same university in 2011.
However, Senator representing Lagos East, Tokunbo Abiru, sought clarification from the nominee as to when he was born and when he actually started schooling.
“You were born on December 2, 1980, but reading further down, you attended St John Primary School, Gboko, in 1989. I am wondering whether you finished secondary school in 1989, which suggests that you started primary school at the age of three to finish in 1989. You also claim that you went to secondary school in 1995.
“What appeared a bit distorted is that you graduated in 2004, meaning that you probably would have spent nine years on your first degree. I just need you to clarify those data starting from primary school, while it took you that long to get your first degree despite the academic brilliance you have exhibited,” he asked.
In his response, Prof. Utsev, who insisted he was born in 1980 and started primary school in 1984, said, “I furthered to secondary school from 1990 to 1995, that was when I got my SSCE (Senior School Certificate Examination).
“I was actually supposed to pass out in 2003 but there was a prolonged strike by ASUU, I spent six years in the programme and that was why I graduated in 2004.”
In his observation, Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, said the nominee probably must have finished nursery school at the age of three to start primary school at the same age.
“The question was you were born in 1980 and you had your first leaving certificate in 1989, that means that the period you should have been in nursery school at the age of four years, you were already in Primary one,” Akpabio said.
In an apparent attempt to save the day, Senator Patrick Abba Moro from Benue State was asked to comment on the development by the Senate President, but his intervention caused a further uproar when the lawmaker said the discrepancies in the nominee’s CV were mere typographical errors.
Abbo shared a “personal story” of how he sat for the common entrance examination in Primary 3 and passed because he was “exceptionally brilliant”.
Moro, however, urged his colleagues to give the nominee the benefit of the doubt. Utsev was, therefore, asked to “bow and go.
