President Bola Tinubu presented a forged degree certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) when he filed his paperwork to lead Nigeria last year.
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 in Chicago. An expanded transcript of the session is still being processed, but it has been learned what has perhaps been the most crucial expectation of Nigerians: How the school would characterize Mr. Tinubu’s certificate under oath and penalty of perjury.
Caleb Westberg, the registrar at Chicago State University, said Mr. 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
CSU’s registrar since November 2020, also said, during the deposition that lasted about 5.5 hours, that Mr 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, Mr. 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 order 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.
