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Going by the extent and depth of local and global reactions to the ongoing controversy surrounding President Bola Tinubu’s Chicago State University certificate saga, it is safe to say it is only the Supreme Court of Nigeria that would rest the matter.
And that would be sometime in November when the threshold lapses for the apex court to adjudicate over the appeal on the tribunal court judgement filed by the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar and his Labour Party counterpart, Peter Obi.
In the meantime, supporters, advocates and other stakeholders have lined up behind either Atiku or Tinubu in support or against the issue. THEWILL also reliably gathered from sources close to the matter that Atiku’s team has already filed its appeal thus beating Friday’s deadline by the Supreme Court, a development confirmed by the press briefing hosted by the PDP flagbearer.
BACKGROUND
Shortly after the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal dismissed the petitions filed by Atiku and the PDP, as well as Obi and the LP against the election of President Tinubu on September 6, 2023, Atiku rejected the verdict and asked his lawyers to file an appeal at the Supreme Court.
The battle extended to the United States of America, where Atiku sought an order that the president’s academic record be released from the Chicago State University, CSU in a fresh bid to challenge the authenticity of the academic claims the President made in his form he filed with the electoral commission, INEC.
Nancy Maldonado, a judge of the United States District Court in Northern Illinois, having adopted the ruling of Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert of the U.S District Court, ordered Chicago State University to release the academic records of Tinubu to Atiku.
Maldonado had overruled Tinubu’s objection to Magistrate Judge Gilbert’s ruling ordering the immediate release of the academic records by the CSU.
According to the President in his appeal, releasing the documents with deposition would cause him severe harm because they were private to him and would not be admissible in the ongoing petition against him in Nigeria. But Atiku filed another appeal, which she upheld and ordered that the documents be released within 48 hours.
“The Court overrules President Tinubu’s objections to Magistrate Judge Gilbert’s recommended ruling, and therefore adopts the ruling in full. Mr Abubakar’s application is therefore granted,” Maldonado ruled.
According to Atiku’s lawyers, the documents sought included an example of a CSU diploma issued to Tinubu in 1979. Any example of a CSU diploma that “contains the same font, seal, signatures and wording” as Tinubu’s diploma issued in June 1979 and CSU documents certified and produced by Jamar Orr, an associate general counsel at CSU at the time. Atiku also instructed his lawyers to depose CSU officials about the authenticity of Tinubu’s academic documents.
As he disclosed during a press conference in Abuja on Thursday, Atiku would add the collected evidence to the suit he filed at the Supreme Court against Tinubu’s election.
During the brief Thursday, October 5, 2023 press conference held in Abuja, Atiku, who called on his political rivals in the LP, Peter Obi and Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party, NNPP, to join hands with him in his battles because the, “The reputation of our country is at stake and that affects Nigerians everywhere and wherever they may be,” accused Tinubu of certificate forgery.
Answering the question on the President’s records in their possession, a lawyer with Atiku at the press briefing said a case of forgery had been established.
According to the lawyer, Kalu Kalu, Bola Ahmed Tinubu forged the certificate he presented to INEC.
“Two, the qualifying certificate from South West College to Chicago State University bears the name of a female student, indicating that the 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 whereas, indeed, the school was established in 1974.
“The same document has it that the owner is a black American and (in) the document which 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 said.
Explaining further to this newspaper, Kalu said, “There are authorities that say you do not have to be convicted for forgery before you are disqualified. This is simple man’s knowledge. Presenting to INEC a document that you know to be false is forgery. The certificate which Tinubu presented to INEC, to his knowledge, is a clear case of forgery.”
DEPOSITION BY THE CSU
According to the sworn, out-of-court oral testimony, otherwise known as deposition, made on Tuesday, October 3, 2023, the CSU registrar, Caleb Westberg, said the following, with regard to President Bola Tinubu’s academic records, “The university only has diplomas that students didn’t pick up in its possession. The university does not typically keep diplomas. I do not have the diploma that was submitted to INEC in our possession.”
On the replacement of the diploma, he said, “It is done by outside vendors”.
Westberg also said it was common for mistakes to be made in data entries from time to time.
“Before CSU, I was at UC, Berkeley and UC, Irving. I’m sure people make mistakes in data entry, from time to time,” he said, adding that it is possible that vendors are responsible for the certificate which Tinubu submitted to Nigeria’s electoral commission ahead of the 2023 presidential election.
“Some policies have changed over the years. When there is a replacement diploma, it is done by outside vendors,” he said.
Asked why President Tinubu did not pick up his replacement diploma from the school, he said: “You will have to ask him. The university only has diplomas that students didn’t pick up in its possession. The university does not typically keep diplomas. I have the diploma that was made available to Mr Enahoro-Ebah in our possession because Mr Tinubu did not pick it up. I do not have the diploma that was submitted to INEC in our possession…”
Speaking on the matter regarding Tinubu’s sex, whether male or female, Westberg deposed, “Tinubu applied to the university as a male and a letter of admission was issued to a male. He matched the records in the file against the information provided by the student or on behalf of the student.
“We believe the Bola Tinubu who attended CSU is the same person who is the President of Nigeria today. There were materials in Mr Tinubu’s records that show that he was a male. I see the application to CSU. Mr Tinubu identified himself as a male.
“His letter of admission identified him as a male. It says: ‘Dear Mr Tinubu, I see the entry on APC’s website wherein President Bola Tinubu was said to have been born in Lagos on March 29, 1952.
“I don’t have a copy of the diploma that was submitted to INEC so I can’t comment on it.
“I am not aware of the fact that in the form that he submitted to INEC he claimed a different nationality or date of birth.
“Yes, our records show that he was born on March 29th. One has ‘1954’ while the other shows ‘1952’.
“From time to time, people do make mistakes when making such entries.”
Also, speaking on Tinubu’s academic records, the depositors stated that President Tinubu’s credentials showed that he graduated from CSU in 1979 with a Bachelor degree in business administration, accounting and management.
The university wrote, “The documents responsive to this request which CSU, after diligent search, has been able to locate are produced herewith and Bates labelled CSU 0008 through CSU 0010. The students’ names on these diplomas have been redacted for privacy reasons.
“CSU is also producing, Bates labelled as CSU 0011 and 0012, diplomas produced for other CSU students (with their names redacted for privacy) which match the format of the Tinubu replacement dated June 27, 1997.”
Present at the deposition were Michael Hayes who represented CSU; Victor P. Henderson and Oluwole Afolabi, who appeared for Bola Tinubu; the Intervenor; Caleb Westberg, Registrar of CSU and Deponent/Witness; Angela Lin, Dechert LLP and five lawyers from the firm who joined by Zoom.
REACTIONS
A constitutional lawyer with Citipoint Chambers in Lagos State, Tomi Olagunju, disagrees with Kalu’s position that a case of certificate forgery by Tinubu exists.
Kalu had said, “What the Nigerian court needs to do is to ask that the original and false certificates be tendered and a case of forgery can be established.”
Speaking with THEWILL on Friday, Olagunju said the case of forgery had not and cannot be established against Tinubu.
According to the section on the Electoral Act, you can get disqualified for an election if you submitted a forged certificate to INEC, he said, adding, “A standard legal stand on forgery in this case will be if there is an original certificate and a fake one. The registrar of CSU said that if diplomas given to you get missing, results issuance are outsourced to third parties. So, I do not see a smoking gun that the Atiku team says they have.
Mack Ogbamosa, another constitutional lawyer, supports Olagunju’s submission. He said that in law, the intention to cheat must be established to make a case of forgery.
He said, “CSU has said that Tinubu attended the college and got a degree and that their former students can replace a lost certificate through a third party. So if President Tinubu submitted a disputed certificate, did he do it with the intention to cheat? That is the question and my answer is no.”
President Bola Tinubu’s lawyer, Wole Afolabi, who represented the President in the United States of America during the deposition by the CSU has weighed in.
On Friday, he appeared on national television to speak on some alleged grey areas in the President’s Chicago State University, CSU, certificate.
On the issue of the appearance of ‘F’ in the President’s admission result into CSU, Afolabi said Tinubu’s certificate indicated female as a result of a mix-up on the part of the University.
Asked why Tinubu’s certificate indicated “F” during the interview, Afolabi said, “The transcript that was provided by Southwest College indicated F. It was clear. All of the other particulars did match information of President Bola Tinubu.
“Now, the registrar was interviewed on why the discrepancies. He said the person applying for the school ticked the box of a male, not a female, and when the admission letter was issued it was issued to Mr Tinubu. When the question was put to the Registrar of CSU, Caleb Westberg, he said it is not unusual for universities to mix up. He has been to several universities. It is possible.”
Reacting to discrepancies on the signatures on the certificate, Afolabi said that certificates were not issued at the time of graduation, until one applied for them.
Afolabi said the person who issued the certificate Tinubu submitted to INEC might not have been in the university in 1979.
On the inter-party level, the governing All Progressives Congress, APC, has accused Atiku of “harbouring deep animosity towards Tinubu whom he believes was responsible for his electoral woes in 2007, 2015, 2019 and this year.” The party urged the former Vice President to get used to the idea that he lost the presidential election.
APC National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka, said “Mr Westberg was unmistaken and unambiguous in his deposition as to the fact that President Bola Tinubu graduated with honours from Chicago State University. He also emphatically provided clear answers on all other issues raised which we can sum up as follows: “That the person who is Nigeria’s president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is the same person who attended Chicago State University. Mr Westberg said the diploma certificate, on which the PDP and Atiku seek to gaslight Nigerians and the whole world, is just a ceremonial document and what proved studentship at Chicago State University and in any American university is transcript, not certificate.
“He said the person admitted, based on the transcript from South West College, was a male named Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Westberg also added the courses taken by President Bola Tinubu at Southwest College were consistent with the courses he took at CSU.”
Asked for the PDP’s position on the ongoing controversy over Tinubu’s varsity academic records, National Publicity of PDP, Mr Debo Olagunagba, said they had noted all the things said by the APC against its presidential candidate but would “respond in like manner very soon.”
Pressed further, he only told THEWILL that the reaction “won’t be long.”
IMPLICATIONS
Kalu said he expects the Supreme Court to follow precedent and entertain the prayers of Abubakar and PDP for the existence of certificate forgery since it was not part of their claims at the Presidential election tribunal.
“There are instances where the Supreme Court held that an application to adduce new evidence at the appellate level can be presented. Just to cite two, first is Uzodinma vs INEC, a case filed by Senator Hope Uzodinma and the APC challenging the election of Emeka Ihedioha of the PDP AND INEC over the Imo State governorship election held on March 8, 2019. The second one is the case, Amaechi vs INEC in 2008,”Kalu said.
Olagunju disagrees. Citing Section 132 (7&8) of the Electoral Act 2022, which states that an election petition must be filed within 21 days after the date of the declaration of results of the elections, he maintains that the petitioner cannot bring in fresh evidence before the Supreme Court.
“That can only be done in ordinary matters. Even at the level of the Court of Appeal, you cannot bring in fresh evidence after filling your petition. So I do not see any evidential value in it. Legally speaking, I also do not see any damage done whether within or outside the country. Given the circumstances of the case, they could not have stayed in Nigeria but in the USA for judgement,” he said.
Then Olagunju made a political suggestion. “It may be useful in the long term. Maybe in 2027 (election).”
However, a presidential aide, Tunde Rahman, in a piece on Friday, titled, CSU Certificate Brouhaha: Setting The Record Straight, said; the former Vice President went “on a wild goose chase to the United States in search of President Bola Tinubu’s certificate.”
Rahman said that it is relevant to point out that in the U.S., premium is not placed on certificates, otherwise called diplomas, as we do here.
“Certificates are merely ceremonial. The emphasis is on transcripts. Employers and schools offering admissions for higher education will only ask for previous transcripts.
“In most cases, the certificates are also printed by third party vendors. Many certificates are left uncollected because what is important is the transcript. The CSU has diplomas that students didn’t pick up in its possession,” he said.
According to Rahman, it is surprising that “Atiku and co. would claim President Tinubu forged his certificate simply because the CSU Registrar said he could not authenticate the certificate presented to him by Atiku’s lawyer as the document Tinubu presented to INEC for the 2023 Presidential Election. He said he cannot confirm because only Tinubu has the certificate which he ordered and which had been picked up for him and that the school does not keep students Certificate.
“Nowhere in the interrogation did Westberg use the word fake or forged as Atiku’s lawyer tried to make him say so.
”Fact is there is no scintilla of doubt that President Tinubu attended and graduated from CSU. As my colleague, Temitope Ajayi, pointed out in his widely-publicised tweet, “You can only forge a certificate you never earned,” President Tinubu honourably earned his degree and he had no reason to forge the certificate of a degree he had in his kitty. He graduated Summa Cum Laude, with distinction. He was on the Vice Chancellor’s Honour List for all his years in the school. Insinuation by anyone that he forged a certificate he worked for is sad and misleading.”
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