Hopefully, the people of Kogi west have properly acquainted themselves with this certificate scandal that has called to question the 7 academic degrees that Senator Dino Melaye, their representative in the Senate, claims that he has.

And surely, larger public must not fail to pay close attention to the raging madness at the higher echelons of power just in case Senator Dino Melaye, like many others before him, tries to fool us at the start of another election cycle that he, after everything that has happened in the past one week, possesses any qualities attributable to a leader beyond several years of setting all the wrong examples.

Let’s forget the past week for a minute. Let’s do a throwback to the Senator’s time in the lower chambers. What good does anyone remember him for beyond his cheerfully happy face after he’d been escorted out of the House after the nasty fight that should never have happened nor involved him? Somebody’s father, a supposedly honourable representative of the people, thrown out of the National Assembly his sweaty body parts and inner wear showing underneath his tattered white agbada. He was smiling and granting audience to reporters.

That passed. Then there was the nasty episode with Senator Oluremi Tinubu that ended with him photographing himself on the streets of Lagos. Roaming. Begging for attention. A Senator. Somebody’s father.

What a shameful thing.

Now, this. The Senator has been accused of not having graduated from a course he claims to have completed, of having colluded with his Head of Department to forge his transcripts. While those allegations should ordinarily have no effect on his position as a Senator and called to question the real motives of the news media that turned the allegations into their mandate for a whole week and counting, the allegations remain scandalous because they had successfully called to question the credibility of a Senator who continues to claim he hold seven different degrees from all over the world.

Understandably, Senator Dino Melaye chose to fight back. So we went before the Ethics Committee of his own choosing; invited a VC of the school he purportedly graduated from to give testimony that could have been revealed in a public statement that was earlier cancelled by school; published a photo of a copy of an NYSC discharge certificate that could have originated anywhere from the NYSC headquarters to any “business centre” that owns a computer, a printer and a photocopying machine. And then he started dancing:

“ajekun iya ni o je. ajekun iya ni o je. Eni ti o to ni’na tin dena deni: ajekun iya ni o je”

“he’ll be beaten over and over. he’ll be beaten over and over. The one who cannot beat the person he’s set a trap for: he’ll be beaten over and over”

Overlooking the pettiness of that shameful and degrading display that has now become prime material for skit-makers on the internet who know exactly what to do with videos of adult idiocy, there’s something else in Dino’s song that should not be overlooked. His words clearly allude to the fact that he’s bigger (read: more powerful) that Omoyele Sowore and his Sahara Reporters and this does not contradict his promise from last week that he can already see Sowore in prison uniforms.

Another thing that must not go above our heads in this whole display is the fact that two of the schools the Senator claims to have got his degree from have publicly denied him. Havard called him out on the lie he told about having a degree from there saying he only attended a one week course and the London School of Economics and Political Science outrightly has no records of his existence. Why have we not seen any of these schools represented before the Ethics Committee yet?

Again, Daniel Melaye’s NYSC Discharge Certificate shows a call-up number that suggests he started his service year in 1999 but the Senator has said he completed service in 2001. The National Youth Sevice Corps has never lasted more than a year as far as we know.

But even if we were to chalk up all these inconsistencies to being just that and that there’s no truth to all of these allegations against him or that they don’t even matter in the grand scheme of things, how can one explain the Senator posting that petty video and then breaking his own record this morning by showing up to plenary in an academic gown that could have been sewn anywhere from Zaria to Alaba market?

Has no one told Dino Melaye that this kind of behaviour is unbefitting for any adult not to talk of a Senator of the Federal Republic? Does he think that the National Assembly is a primary school that allows 7-year-olds throw tantrums and play dress up?

Does Dino Melaye need to be reminded to act his grey strands?