There is no proof that President Tinubu’s academic certificates submitted to the INEC for the 2023 Presidential election were forged, according to the BBC’s Global Disinformation Team.
Tinubu’s academic records were released by Chicago State University earlier this month and were widely shared on social media. Still, they were branded false by opposition leaders and members, particularly his main opponents, Labour Party’s Peter Obi and PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, who filed a case against Tinubu in a US court.
According to the case, Atiku accused Tinubu of forging a CSU diploma awarded in 1979, which he presented to INEC.
At the trial, President Tinubu’s lawyers debated that the documents would be useless in Atiku’s suit to the Apex Court. However, the court’s judge, Jeffrey Gilbert, ordered CSU to reveal to Atiku’s legal team vital and non-proprietary documents in two days.
These documents included a copy of a diploma issued by CSU in 1979, a copy of the diplomas given to Tinubu by the CSU, copies of diplomas awarded to other students by the same university that are similar to the one given to him in 1979, and other documents from the varsity that Jamar Orr (former staff of the university) approved in the 12 months starting August 1, 2022.
According to the BBC’s analysis of the documents, the Social Security number in the transcript of Chicago varsity matches that of other documents where Tinubu’s gender was indicated as male.
The documents released also questioned Tinubu’s birth date and secondary school. One of the documents showed Tinubu went to secondary school in 1970, but according to information on the school’s website, it was established in 1974.
In addition to the gender difference, the British media reported that the birth dates on some of the documents differed from Tinubu’s official date of birth, 29th March 1952.
The report said Tinubu’s transcript from the Civil Service University (CSU) showed his date as 29th March 1954, whereas his undergraduate admissions form showed him as 29th March 1955.
Atiku’s lawyer, Mr. Westberg, replied at cross-examinations that the differences might have resulted from human error.