BBC Report: Tinubu’s Chicago certifications are authentic
The BBC’s Global Disinformation Team says that there is no proof that President Bola Tinubu’s academic credentials from Chicago State University, which he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission for the 2023 presidential election, were falsified.
The PUNCH had previously claimed that the institution had made public Tinubu’s academic credentials. These documents quickly gained popularity on social media, but some opposition party leaders and members—particularly those of his primary challengers, Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubaka of the Peoples Democratic Party—called them phony.
In an attempt to obtain access to Tinubu’s academic records, Atiku filed a lawsuit in a US court, accusing him of forging the 1979 Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree from CSU that he had given to INEC.
Read also>>> Certificate: Atiku urges the Supreme Court to consider his fresh proof against Tinubu
A copy of any diploma that the CSU issued in 1979, a copy of the diploma that the CSU awarded to Tinubu in 1979, copies of diplomas that were awarded to other students that had the same font, seal, signatures, and wording as the diploma that the CSU awarded to Tinubu in 1979, and documents from the CSU that were certified by Jamar Orr, a member of the university staff at the time, were among the documents that Atiku demanded during the trial.
However, Tinubu’s attorneys argued that the records would not matter in Atiku’s Supreme Court case against Tinubu.
But the magistrate, Jeffrey Gilbert, mandated that the CSU give Atiku’s legal team access to all pertinent, non-privileged records in a matter of two days.
However, the BBC discovered that Tinubu’s Social Security Number in the Chicago University transcript matched the information in other records that indicated Tinubu’s gender as male.
There were doubts regarding Tinubu’s secondary school and date of birth after the documents were made public. According to one of the documents, Tinubu studied at Government College in Lagos in 1970. On the other hand, the school’s website claims that it was formed in 1974.
In addition to the gender difference, the British media claimed that some of the disclosed documents’ birth dates were not the same as President Tinubu’s official date of birth, which is March 29, 1952.
It states that Tinubu was born on March 29, 1954, according to his CSU transcript, but March 29, 1955, according to his undergraduate admissions application.
According to the BBC story, Tinubu provided his date of birth as March 29, 1952, and as a result, Atiku’s attorney allegedly questioned the date of birth on the certificate during Westberg’s deposition regarding the documents that were submitted to INEC.
According to the report, Westberg indicated during cross-examination that the differences might have been the result of a human error.
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