The Presidency on Wednesday spoke on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Chicago State University degree certificate, insisting that the certificate the President presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as part of the requirement of the February 25 Presidential election was not forged.
Tinubu’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, said in a statement that the Chicago State University confirmed that the President didn’t submit a fake result to INEC.
Ajayi noted that CSU affirmed under oath that Tinubu attended and graduated from the institution and that the school does not handle replacements for lost certificates.
He said there was no truth in the forgery claim, adding that no person can forge a certificate he already has.
Posting on X, 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. 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 fake certificate to INEC does not make sense. A man can not forge the academic records he possesses. You can only forge what you don’t have.”
The Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar had gone to the U.S. Illinois District court to mandate CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records to enable him back his allegation of forgery at the Supreme Court following his appeal of the judgment of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT).
The PEPT had dismissed the allegation of forgery against Tinubu.
