CSU exonerates Tinubu, say Presidency
The Presidency said on Wednesday that academic documents revealed by Chicago State University in the United States exonerated President Bola Tinubu and reaffirmed his status as an alumnus of the school.
Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Public Affairs, also said that the CSU never claimed in its evidence that Tinubu’s certificate supplied to the Independent National Electoral Commission prior to the presidential election was fake.
Former Vice President Abubakar Atiku would file his application before the Supreme Court on Thursday (today) after obtaining Tinubu’s academic records on the direction of an Illinois, Chicago court.
Atiku, who stood against Tinubu in the February presidential election on the ticket of the Peoples Democratic Party, is anticipated to present the documents collected from the CSU with the Supreme Court in support of his election appeal.
According to reports, the university released the President’s academic records on Monday, and the CSU Registrar, Carl Westberg, also conducted a deposition of the documents on Tuesday, in accordance with Magistrate Jeffrey Gilbert’s judgment.
Gilbert granted Atiku’s request for Tinubu’s academic records on September 19, but the President filed a review of the order.
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Tinubu’s lawyers maintained that the records would be irrelevant in Atiku’s Supreme Court appeal against Tinubu and requested a stay of proceedings.
However, federal judge Nancy Maldonado overruled Tinubu’s objections and ordered the CSU to release the President’s academic records.
The institution responded to Atiku’s four requests in the CSU documents and affirmed that Tinubu attended the CSU.
But taking to his account on the X micro-blogging platform on Wednesday, the presidential media aide dismissed reports that the CSU disowned Tinubu in its deposition.
Ajayi wrote, “We should be clear. In the deposition made by the Chicago State University, there was nowhere the university said the certificate presented to INEC by President Tinubu was fake.’’
He added, “The university insisted under oath that President Tinubu graduated with honors and even at that, replacements for lost certificates are done by vendors, not the university.
“The claim that President Tinubu submitted a fake certificate to INEC does not make sense. A man cannot forge the academic records he possesses. You can only forge what you don’t have.”
Addressing the issue for the first time, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, downplayed the controversies surrounding the educational qualification of the President.
He said the Federal Government was not wasting time on Atiku’s case in the US, describing it as frivolous.
