The former vice president said the “discrepancies” in the NYSC certificate of Mr Tinubu further validate the allegation of forgery.
Atiku said the “Adekunle” in
the NYSC certificate Mr Tinubu submitted to INEC did not feature on the CSU
certificate.
“Every Nigerian who has
undergone the NYSC programme understands that the names on the NYSC are never a
creation of the candidate, but the official name that the student was
officially known as, from their tertiary institution.
“Tinubu was allegedly never known as Adekunle at CSU. Thus, the only way to understand how Adekunle was smuggled on his NYSC discharge certificate can only be explained as a forgery,” he said.
He also urged the supporters of
Mr Tinubu to desist from spinning the report on the deposition, stating that
the deposition is clear that Mr Tinubu forged the certificate.
“The truth of the matter
remains that Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, falsified a document he
submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and swore an
affidavit under oath to back up his forgery.
“President
Tinubu’s supporters and spin doctors will want to force the narrative of, at
least, ‘Tinubu graduated from the CSU down our throat, even when the narrative
has no foothold in logic.
The question remains: How does
a candidate graduate from a university that you were never qualified for?” he
said.
The Supreme Court will have the
final say on the dispute in the 25 February presidential election.
Read the full statement below:
PRESS RELEASE
Tinubu’s
house of forgeries
Since Tuesday last week when
the deposition regarding President Bola Tinubu’s educational qualifications
came to the fore in the United States, there have been several attempts to
twist the facts of the matter, which deliberately aim to confuse the mind of
the public concerning the matter.
Some media aides to the
president have come out openly to ‘push back on the narrative’, while some
media houses, especially one, have persistently slanted their story to justify
a corrupted interpretation of the facts in the disposition.
Sadly, however, the truth of the matter remains that Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu falsified a document he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and swore an affidavit under oath to back up his forgery.
On page 26 of the deposition
which is publicly available, the Registrar of the Chicago State University,
Caleb Westberg under oath, was asked a simple question, “CSU has determined
that it does not have a true and correct copy of the diploma issued to Bola
Tinubu is 1979, correct?
“To which the Registrar
responded, “That’s correct.”
Also, on page 27, a similar
question was put to Mr. Westberg: “So, CSU, after going through every diploma,
was unable to find an authentic copy of any diploma that CSU issued to Tinubu
in 1979. Is that correct?”
The CSU Registrar, in his
response, said: “We did not find any diploma issued by CSU in 1979 to Mr
Tinubu.”
And coming straight to the
specific issue of whether the CSU is aware of or in possession of the diploma
that Tinubu submitted to INEC, to which Mr. Westberg simply said, “Correct, we
are not aware of it.”
Indeed, anyone who has taken
time to do a thorough reading of the deposition will come to the unambiguous
conclusion that the footprints of Tinubu’s odyssey as far as the CSU documents
are concerned are filled with profound forgeries and abuse of administrative
due process.
President Tinubu’s supporters
and spin doctors will want to force the narrative of, at least, “Tinubu
graduated from the CSU down our throat, even when the narrative has no foothold
in logic.
The question remains: How does
a candidate graduate from a university that you were never qualified for?
According to information in the
open, President Tinubu applied to the CSU with a pre-qualifying 1970
certificate from Government College Lagos, whereas the school did not come into
existence until 1974. Maybe this should make Tinubu the first man ever to have
an anticipatory certification from the school four clear years before the
founding of the school.
Another mystery is that in addition to the non-existing Government College Lagos certificate, Tinubu presented a certificate from another school in the United States that belongs to a female candidate and a Cambridge HSC of 1970 – the same year he purportedly graduated from a secondary school in Nigeria.
Long before the CSU discovery
of last week, Tinubu had had a history of forgery and perjury. In his form
CF001 he filed ahead of his governorship election in 1999, Tinubu had claimed
albeit fraudulently that he attended St John’s Primary School Aroloya,
Government College Ibadan and Chicago University as different from Chicago
State University. The late lawyer and human rights icon Gani Fawehinmi would
have succeeded in bursting him but for the immunity, he enjoyed as Governor of
Lagos State.
President Tinubu must be a man
of mystery. No wonder his supporters call him Idan (a distorter).
It is our contention that at
the heart of the forgery scandal against President Tinubu is the question of
integrity and morality.
If the President would not do
what is honourable by resigning from office and saving the country an imminent
embarrassment, at least his supporters should desist from telling shameful lies
to confuse the public
Lastly, while supporters of the
President are quick to reference his transcript from the Chicago State University
as evidence of his studentship in the school, we are alarmed how his NYSC
certificate bears Bola Adekunle Tinubu, even when the CSU said under oath that
the middle name of “A” was never interpreted in any document in his file.
Every Nigerian who has
undergone the NYSC programme understands that the names on the NYSC are never a
creation of the candidate, but the official name that the student was
officially known as, from their tertiary institution. Tinubu was allegedly
never known as Adekunle at CSU. Thus, the only way to understand how Adekunle
was smuggled on his NYSC discharge certificate can only be explained as a
forgery.
Yet, his media aides will come
to the open to make a shameful alternative fact.
It is even more shameful that
just when this whole scandal continues to unfold, media handlers of President
Tinubu have, from nowhere, smuggled the middle name of Adekunle into his
Wikipedia account. The word Adekunle in Yoruba is a house filled with royalty.
But in this instance, we daresay it is a house filled with forgeries.
It is, therefore, becoming very
obvious that there is no end point to how President Tinubu and his spin doctors
will continue to use one forgery to cover the other.
Signed:
Paul Ibe
Media Adviser to Atiku Abubakar
Vice President of Nigeria
(1999-2007) and Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (2023)
Abuja
8th October, 2023.
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