CertificateGate: Atiku Accuses Presidency Of Twisting Facts To Confuse Nigerians

Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the 2023 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, has accused the presidency of twisting key facts that indicted president Bola Tinubu of certificate forgery to confuse Nigerians.

Atiku made the allegation on Sunday in a statement issued by his media adviser, Paul Ibe.

Recall Tinubu has been a subject of serious inquest in a US court following decades of controversy surrounding his educational records.

He had provided different accounts that he graduated from a Nigerian College after his initial presentation that he did not attend a college but wrote the senior secondary school certificate examination from home before proceeding to the US fell through.

The president also made another explanation that the certificate which the Chicago State University, CSU, issued to him alongside other students in 1979 upon graduation could not be found after a military attack on his house.

He said he proceeded to obtain a replacement certificate from a third party but three different certificates with various discrepancies are in circulation including the copy he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.

These discrepancies including his real name, age, and if indeed he attended CSU after first filing before the country’s electoral body in 1999 when he was vying to be Lagos State Governor, that he graduated from University of Chicago prompted Atiku’s request to put to rest the confusion about the president’s identity.

The CSU indeed acknowledged there was a Bola A. Tinubu, who was its student, said the certificate the president presented to INEC ahead of the 2023 general election was not issued by it.

Atiku in the statement on Sunday highlighted the key takeaways against the president from the court saying, “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 that, “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.”

He further stated that when asked whether the CSU is aware of or in possession of the diploma that Tinubu submitted to INEC,” Mr. Westberg simply said, “Correct, we are not aware of it.”

Over the weekend, the confusion surrounding the president’s past worsened when his discharge certificate from the National Youth Service Corps was made public.

The NYSC discharge certificate showed the president commenced his compulsory national service in 1982 ending in 1983 with the name Tinubu, Bola Adekunle.

Soon after the certificate was made public, the president who’s always been known as Bola Ahmed Tinubu had his Wikipedia profile edited to read Bola Ahmed Adekunle Tinubu further raising eyebrows to what more the president could be hiding.