The BBC has said there is no evidence that President Bola Tinubu forged his Chicago State University’s academic records. They were tendered before the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for the 2023 presidential election.
The British media organisation made this known in a report by its BBC’s Global Disinformation Team reports published on Wednesday.
Recall that a United States magistrate, Jeffrey Gilbert, ordered CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. This has left Nigerians with agitation as to whether the result was forged based on some gaps.
In the wake of this, CSU’s registrar, Caleb Westberg, did not fault the president’s certificate. But he said the copy tendered before the nation’s electoral body did not emanate from the institution.
Atiku, who contested against Tinubu under the Peoples Democratic Party, has addressed the media. He said the president’s academic record was falsified.
Peter Obi
On Wednesday morning, his main challenger during the election, the Labour Party’s presidential candidate, Peter Obi, asked Tinubu to speak on the development.
In the midst of this, Tinubu’s lawyers maintained that the documents would not be relevant in Atiku’s appeal.
However, according to the BBC’s findings, the Social Security Number in the transcript from the Chicago varsity matched what it had in other documents in which Tinubu’s gender was marked as male.
The released documents raised questions about Tinubu’s birth date and his secondary school.
One of the documents disclosed that Tinubu attended Government College Lagos in 1970. But the information available on the school website states that it was only established in 1974.
Gender
BBC also reported that apart from the gender discrepancy, the birth dates in some of the released documents did not match the official birth date of Tinubu, which is March 29, 1952.
According to it, Tinubu’s transcript from the CSU has his date of birth as March 29, 1954. However, his undergraduate admissions application form had his date of birth as March 29, 1955.
Meanwhile, the BBC report claimed that Atiku’s lawyer questioned the date of birth on the certificate during Westberg’s deposition on the forms submitted to INEC. He did because Tinubu was said to have given his date of birth as March 29, 1952.
Westberg, during cross-examination, the report said, responded that the discrepancies could have been due to a human error.
“Mr Westerberg said that the school could authenticate this particular diploma because it was still in its possession,” it stated.
BBC said it contacted CSU with questions on the diplomas and it referred to the statement that read in part, “We are confident and always have been in the veracity and integrity of our records regarding Tinubu’s attendance and completion of graduation requirements.”
