Chicago Varsity Says Tinubu Presented Forged Certificate
Caleb Westberg, the registrar at Chicago State University, said Mr Tinubu’s certificate, dated June 22, 1979, was not issued by the school therefore the CSU could not authenticate its source.
Chicago Varsity Says Tinubu Presented Forged Certificate
Bola Tinubu presented a forged degree certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) when he filed his paperwork to lead Nigeria in June 2022.
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Peoples Gazette reports based on the testimony of the institution he arrogated. This introduces a new but potentially fatal front in the ongoing battle to oust the Nigerian leader for his documented misdeeds from years gone by.
The official repudiation of Mr Tinubu’s certificate — the only academic qualification he presented to the electoral office — came at a deposition of school officials on Tuesday in Chicago.
An expanded transcript of the session is still being processed, but The Gazette has learnt about what has perhaps been the most crucial expectation of Nigerians: How the school would characterise Mr Tinubu’s certificate under oath and penalty of perjury.
Caleb Westberg, the registrar at Chicago State University, said Mr Tinubu’s certificate, dated June 22, 1979, and tendered to INEC on June 17, 2022, was not issued by the school and its administrators could, therefore, not be able to authenticate its source, The Gazette learnt.
Mr Westberg, CSU’s registrar since November 2020, also said, during the deposition that lasted about 5.5 hours, that Mr Tinubu did not apply for a replacement certificate, nor was he ever issued one.
The categorical statement capped a successful outcome for the monthslong legal strategy of Atiku Abubakar, Mr Tinubu’s main opponent, who approached the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago to ascertain the authenticity or otherwise of the document.
Federal district judge Nancy Maldonado granted a final order for CSU administrators to turn over all documents relating to Mr Tinubu to the school and also sit down for deposition by an adversarial team of lawyers deployed by Mr Abubakar.
Mr Tinubu, sensing the intractable consequences of the proceeding, vigorously fought to thwart its successful outcome, with his lawyers warning the judge in a September 21 hearing that releasing the documents with deposition would inevitably inflict severe, irreparable harm against the Nigerian president.
The school had long insisted that Mr Tinubu was its student, entering in 1977 and graduating in 1979, but its inability to authenticate the certificate the Nigerian president submitted would ripple through Nigeria’s over 200 million population for the foreseeable future.
Chicago Varsity Says Tinubu Presented Forged Certificate
Previously in 1999, Mr Tinubu had lied under oath when he ran for governor of Lagos, claiming he obtained a degree from the prestigious University of Chicago.
However, he managed to escape being held accountable for the breach because he had been elected before it was discovered, and he did not submit a certificate backing his claim, only an affidavit that was later found to be fiction, and the Nigerian Supreme Court said he could not be charged with crimes as a serving governor.
He subsequently stopped claiming attendance at the University of Chicago, holding on instead to a claim that he attended Chicago State University, one of Illinois State University campuses traditionally popular among black people.
