The Presidency has claimed that the academic records released by Chicago State University (CSU), United States, at the orders of the United States District Court Judge, Hon. Nancy L. Maldonado, is a vindication for President Bola Tinubu, and a disservice to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Public Affairs, Temitope Ajayi, made the remarks on Wednesday on his account on the X micro-blogging platform, saying the released records confirmed Tinubu as an alumnus of the school.
It could be recalled that in compliance with the order of the court, the Registrar of the CSU, Westberg, had carried out a deposition on Tinubu’s academic records at the office of Atiku’s lawyer, Angela Liu, at West Wacker Drive in Chicago.
Ajayi also claimed that CSU never said during deposition that the certificate presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) before the presidential election by Tinubu was forged.
Dismissed reports that the CSU disowned Tinubu in its deposition, Ajayi wrote:
“We should be clear. In the deposition made by the Chicago State University, there was nowhere the university said the certificate presented to INEC by President Tinubu is fake.’’
He added: “The university insisted under oath that President Tinubu graduated with honours and even at that, replacements for lost certificates are done by vendors, not the university.
“The claim that President Tinubu submitted a fake certificate to INEC does not make sense. A man cannot forge the academic records he possesses. You can only forge what you don’t have.”
On his part, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, downplayed the controversies surrounding the Chicago documents.
Tuggar, while speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, said the President had met with other world leaders despite the controversy and the issue had not been a subject of discussion in all his recent international engagements.
Tuggar said: “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.”
He added: “There is a tendency to always try to distract and detain people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that.
“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, was the captain; and was a head boy.”
He noted further that considering the economic challenges we are facing, we shouldn’t be wasting time about whether some certificate, whether there is a ‘t’ missing or an ‘i’ hasn’t been dotted, adding that “that shouldn’t be our primary focus at the moment”.
On his part, former Vice President Atiku would said a moment ago during a press conference that he will file his application at the Supreme Court along with Tinubu’s academic records obtained on the order of the Illinois court.
Atiku, who contested against Tinubu in the February presidential election, said that he will file the documents he obtained from the CSU in furtherance of his election appeal at the apex court. Read more.
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