President Bola Tinubu.
Chicago State University has revealed that Tinubu presented a forged certificate to INEC.
Newsone reports that the testimony of Chicago State University, the testimony of the institution Bola Tinubu arrogated, reveals that the Nigerian President presented a forged degree certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) when he filed his paperwork to lead Nigeria in June 2022.
This online news platform understands that 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, October 3, 2023, in Chicago. An expanded transcript of the session is still being processed, but this online newspaper learned about what has perhaps been the most crucial expectation of Nigerians: How the school would characterise Tinubu’s certificate under oath and penalty of perjury.
“It is a Nigerian thing to forge stamps of organizations”, a Staff Member of Chicago State University in a sworn deposition on Tuesday, affirmed that Tinubu’s documents which bear CSU Insignia were not issued by the school.
The registrar at Chicago State University, Caleb Westberg, said 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.
Westberg, who has been Chicago State University Registrar since November 2020, also said, during the deposition that lasted about 5.5 hours, that 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, 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 other 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.
Sensing the intractable consequences of the proceeding, Tinubu 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.
Chicago State University had long insisted that 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.
Newsone Nigeria recalls that Tinubu lied under oath in 1999 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.
The former Lagos State Governor was narrowly declared the winner of the February 25 presidential election, and he was only sworn in on May 29. But today’s development could all but mark a putative end to his presidency due to the constitutional proscription against the submission of a fake certificate to the electoral office.
Section 137 (1)(j) of the Nigerian Constitution (amended in 2010) specifically stated that no one would be legitimately elected president of Nigeria if the person “has presented a forged certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission.”
The records obtained from the school, the deposition, and other material collected through the U.S. legal system are now being prepared for onward submission to the Nigeria Supreme Court, where a final decision on the presidential election challenge would be made on or before December 6, 2023.