The Media Adviser of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Paul Ibe, has faulted what he called a “corrupted interpretation of the facts in the disposition” released by the Chicago State University against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Ibe, in a statement, said 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”.
The statement said: “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.
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“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,” he alleged.
“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,” he said.
He also said 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.
“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.”
The Atiku Abubakar’s spokesman alleged that 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.
“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.”
Meanwhile, Tinubu’s lawyer, Wole Afolabi, has said that a mixup at Chicago State University is the reason President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s certificate indicates “F” meant for a female.
He said: “When the question was put to Dr West Brown, he said it is not unusual for universities to mix up. He (West Brown) has been to several universities. It is possible.”
On the discrepancies on the signatures on the certificate, Afolabi said that certificates were not issued at the time of graduation until one applied for them.
He added that the person who issued the certificate Tinubu submitted to INEC might not have been in the university in 1979.
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