President Bola Tinubu’s presidency has come with a lot of controversy. This is mainly due to the release of the president’s academic documents being the culmination of a judicial case filed by one of his main rivals in February’s presidential election.
Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party(PDP) requested Tinubu’s academic records from Chicago State University (CSU) through discovery. Still, Tinubu’s lawyers opposed the application, citing privacy concerns.
Abubakar requested copies of diplomas issued by CSU in 1979 and diplomas awarded to other students with the same font, seal, signatures, and wording as the diploma awarded to Tinubu. CSU submitted seven diplomas.
The university stated that it could not find Tinubu’s 1979 diploma but produced a replacement dated 27 June 1979. It also released diplomas awarded to other students.
Tinubu has three different diplomas: one from 1979 that he says was lost when he went into exile in the 1990s, one that he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission(INEC) and a replacement one from CSU that he never collected.
According to some recent Reddit threads, an #ENDSARS community group did a poll titled, “Was the certificate submitted by Bola Ahmed Tinubu to INEC obtained from CSU?” Of 101 total votes, 53 voted, “No it wasn’t,” compared to 12 who voted, “Yes it was.” The other votes were 19 ” Results ” answers and 17, “I don’t care”.
Under the hashtag #NGAWatch, standing for Nigeria Watch, Steve Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics at John Hopkins University, has actively advocated against President Tinubu, especially concerning the forged certificate. Just yesterday, the 10th of October, he tweeted this:
#NGAWatch: It’s time to hang Pres. Tinubu — the forger in chief — OUT TO DRY. pic.twitter.com/J3wVf2HeTE
— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) October 10, 2023
Some interesting replies to this tweet are from an X page titled “Brother Barth,” a Christian page. Brother Barth replied, “THERE MAY NOT BE UP TO 10% OF NIGERIA ELITES WHO ARE PEOPLE OF INTEGRITY,” writing ten lengthy points to support the title’s claim.
Brother Barth claims that most Nigerian elites rose to power through corruption. Many of them probably also forged their certificates, and that’s why most of them “have become tongue-tied on the issue.”
The account also added that most Nigerian youth have also become accustomed to forgery and other forms of corruption, and it is not a surprise that many of the younger generation may not find it as a surprise or support Tinubu.
A fact-checking organisation in Nigeria claimed that the diploma Mr Tinubu submitted was not from CSU, but the BBC found that it did include the phrase “with honors” under the degree name.
Mr Tinubu graduated from CSU with honours, as attested to by several court documents the BBC saw.
The person who attended CSU with the name Bola A. Tinubu is male, as the Social Security Number in the transcript from Southwest College matches what it has in other documents in which the student’s gender is marked as male.
The released documents raised questions about Mr Tinubu’s birth date and the secondary school he attended. The birth dates in some of the released documents differed from the official birth date of Mr Tinubu, 29 March 1952.
According to the BBC Disinformation team, they called Mr Tinubu’s and Mr Abubakar’s teams, but they have not responded to their questions.
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