The Presidency has refuted claims that the certificate President Bola Tinubu presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, in order to run for Presidency in 2023 was forged.
Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, in a statement, yesterday, said Chicago State University, CSU, did not admit that the certificate Tinubu presented to INEC was fake anywhere in its deposition.
He argued further that the university affirmed under oath that Tinubu attended and graduated from the institution and that the school does not handle replacements of lost certificates.
Ajayi spoke as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, said the administration of President Tinubu does not have time to waste on “trivial matters”, describing Atiku’s current moves as distractions.
However, Mr. Paul Ibe, Special Adviser to former Vice President and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, 2023, presidential candidate, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, dismissed Tuggars’s position as “irresponsible and shameful” and countered Ajayi, saying from the depositions on CSU’s records on Tuesday, Tinubu forged the documents.
This came as the Labour Party, LP, regretted that the controversies trailing Tinubu’s academic records were putting Nigeria’s image among the comity of nations on trial, adding that it was awaiting the supreme court’s decision on the issue to take a final position.
Ajayi’s rebuttal comes amid reports that the Chicago State University had said in the testimony of the institution that the Nigerian President presented a forged degree certificate to the INEC when he filed his paperwork to lead Nigeria in June 2022.
Ajayi in his submission said there is no truth in such claims as no man can forge a certificate he already possesses and it is only what you don’t have that you forge.
Taking to his account on the X micro-blogging platform, the presidential media aide wrote: “We should be clear. In the deposition made by the Chicago State University, there was nowhere the University said the certificate presented to INEC by President Tinubu is fake.
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