From Victor Osula, Abuja
“With the economic challenges we are facing, we shouldn’t be wasting time about some certificate”, Says Foreign Affairs Minister, Tuggar.
Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in the 2023 general election on Thursday accused President Bola Tinubu of Certificate Forgery.
Atiku who made the accusation at a press conference in Abuja was responding to a question from journalists after his address in which he called on well- meaning Nigerians, presidential candidates of the Labour Party, Peter Obi and their New Nigeria Peoples Party. Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso to joins hands with him to salvage Nigeria image from damage he thinks the controversy portends.
Answering the question on what the documents in their possession from Chicago State University, Atiku’s lawyer, Kalu Kalu, one of the lawyers to Atiku, insisted that President Tinubu forged the certificate he submitted to INEC to contest the 2023 Presidential Election.
He said, “One, that Bola Ahmed Tinubu forged the certificate he presented to INEC.
“Two, that the qualifying certificate from South West College to Chicago State University bears a female, indicating that that document does not belong to Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“Three, the Chicago State University admission form has a claim that Bola Ahmed Tinubu attended Government College Lagos and graduated in 1970 when indeed the school was established in 1974.
“The same document has it that the owner of that document is a black American and (in) the document Bola Ahmed Tinubu submitted to INEC, he denied having dual citizenship, which means it does not belong to him.
“Then, the same document, oral deposition, said the A in Bola A Tinubu is Ahmed, but the NYSC certificate Bola Ahmed Tinubu submitted to INEC has Adekunle. I don’t know where Adekunle emerged from”, he concluded.
Tinubu’s government had reacted earlier by maintaining that the President’ s Varsity records are okay.
Speaking on a Channels TV programme Sunrise Daily, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, said the administration cannot waste time on such “trivial matters”.
Tuggar, on Wednesday, said that the controversy does not cast a shadow on some of the president’s recent international engagements.
“There is a tendency to always try to distract people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that,” he said.
He argued that a former president, Muhammadu Buhari, experienced a similar issue.
“Nobody is wasting time about certificate qualification for somebody who has been a governor of a state, served two terms, and has been on the national stage as a politician.
“You remember that (former) President Buhari had to go through the same thing, where people were actually questioning whether he went to secondary school or not. Someone who had classmates and was the captain? He was a head boy,” he said.
The minister claimed that during Tinubu’s recent international meetings, no one has shown interest in the saga.
“The foreign leaders that we’ve been engaging and the international organisations clearly are disinterested in wasting time on such.
“We pay no mind to that,” Tuggar stated.
He added that due to the critical situation of the nation, Nigerians should not be obsessed by certification.
Instead, he asked them to concentrate on development.
”With the economic challenges we are facing, we shouldn’t be wasting time about some certificate; whether there is a T missing or an I hasn’t been dotted. That shouldn’t be our primary focus at the moment,” he argued.
Atiku Abubaka had approached the US District Court in Northern Illinois to compel the Chicago State University (CSU), to release President Tinubu’s academic records, arguing that it would boost his suit challenging his election in the February 25 poll.
He had requested the documents for use in Nigerian courts to support his argument that Tinubu forged a certificate he claimed to have obtained from CSU in 1979 and submitted to Nigeria’s electoral body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), for the 2023 presidential election.
Following his move, a US Court ordered CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records to Atiku.
The university, on Monday, released to Atiku’s legal team, a volume documents connected to Tinubu’s education at the institution and copies of certificates with redacted names issued to other persons about the same time the Nigerian president finished from the school in 1979.
It also contained Tinubu’s admission records and a letter dated 27 June 2022 confirming that he attended the university from August 1977 to June 1979 majoring in accounting. The letter said Tinubu was awarded Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Honours on 22 June 1979.
