By Samuel Ogunsona with BBC reports
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), investigation team has said the allegation against the Nigeria president, Bola Tinubu, by the opposition over his Chicago State University (CSU) certificate forgery is groundless.
According to BBC global disinformation team, “There is no evidence that the diploma Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu submitted to the country’s electoral commission was forged”.
However. The Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), affirmed the election of President Bola Tinubu after dismissing the petitions of Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party and his party and Alhaji Abubakar Atiku and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Upon the PEPC ruling, PDP Presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, legal team claims to have spotted a dissimilarity between the signature on Bola Tinubu certificate released by CSU and the one presented to Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
BBC said, “Mr Tinubu’s lawyers opposed the discovery application, citing privacy concerns, but the US court decided it should proceed.
The documents requested by Mr Abubakar were:
A copy of any diploma issued by CSU in 1979
A copy of the diploma CSU gave to Mr Tinubu in 1979
Copies of diplomas with the same font, seal, signatures, and wording awarded to other students that are similar to what CSU awarded to Mr Tinubu in 1979
Documents from CSU that were certified by Jamar Orr, who was then a staff member of CSU, in the 12 months from 1 August 2022
In response to request one, CSU submitted seven diplomas covering different disciplines with the names of the students redacted. According to the university’s registrar, these diplomas had not been collected by the students.
In response to request two, CSU stated that it could not find the diploma they issued to Mr Tinubu in 1979, because they do not keep copies of diplomas already collected by students.
In response to request three, CSU stated that it produced for Mr Tinubu a replacement diploma dated 27 June 1979. It also released diplomas awarded to other students that bore similar font, seal, signatures and wordings as Mr Tinubu’s diplomas.
In response to request four, CSU submitted other academic documents initially attested to and released by Mr Orr.
BBC disinformation team report to have been given access to the deposition transcript by Mr Abubakar’s spokesperson, Phrank Shaibu.
Some social media users in Nigeria allege that the deposition and the diplomas released by CSU confirm that the diploma submitted to Inec by Mr Tinubu was forged.
“This claim was also repeated by one of Mr Abubakar’s lawyers, Kalu Kalu, at a press conference last week”.
“We found there was no evidence to support this claim”.