Tinubu’s CSU Certificate Release increases Age, Gender Variations controversies
After back and forth, the Chicago State University (CSU) released the academic records of President Bola Tinubu to his political opponent, Atiku Abubakar, on Monday.
Atiku, the presidential candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 election, had requested the documents to back his allegation of forgery of CSU certificate against Tinubu.
The allegation of forgery was one of those dismissed by the presidential election court in the suit Atiku filed to challenge the election of Tinubu.
Despite the court’s ruling, Atiku continued his case at the US court, hoping to get official documents to back his claim and possibly include them in his appeal at the Supreme Court.
Through his lawyers, Atiku sought these key things – an example of a CSU diploma issued in 1979; Tinubu’s diploma issued in 1979; example of a CSU diploma that “contains the same font, seal, signatures and wording” as Tinubu’s diploma issued in June 1979 and CSU documents certified and produced by Jamar Orr, an associate general counsel at CSU at the time.
Tinubu had done all within his power not to have the record released, saying they would cause him severe harm because they were private to him but a United States District Court in Northern Illinois ordered CSU to release the academic records.
No sooner had CSU released the records than the social media literarily caught fire as supporters of the two top politicians took time to share materials that they considered favourable to them.
The documents contained Tinubu’s admission records, and a letter dated 27 June 2022 confirming that he attended the university from August 1977 to June 1979 majoring in accounting. The letter said Tinubu was awarded Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Honours on 22 June 1979.
A careful look at the documents showed that the certificate which Tinubu submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is different from the certificates CSU issued in 1979. Tinubu, who had previously claimed to have lost his original certificates, presented a replacement of his CSU diploma to INEC.
Sample of diploma issued in 1979 by the university which is slightly different from the replacement it says it issued to Tinubu 18 years later.
Tinubu who applied to Southwest College for an associate degree in 1975 claimed to have attended Government College, Lagos, and presented a 1970 GCE A-level result. Whereas, Government College, Lagos, was established in 1974 by the administration of Brig. General Mobolaji Johnson.
In his documents to INEC, Tinubu said he was born on March 29, 1952. This is his known date of birth, at least from the yearly colloquium he organised consistently until he got elected into the highest office in the land. However, in the record released by CSU, Tinubu was said to have been born on March 29, 1954, a clear gap of two years.
Farooq Kperogi, a US-based Professor, who analysed the documents said while some were authentic, he believed part of it was forged.
