In an investigation conducted by the BBC’s Global Disinformation Team, it has been confirmed that there is no evidence to support claims of forgery regarding the diploma submitted by Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the country’s electoral commission.
Gatekeepers News reports that President Tinubu faced allegations of submitting a forged diploma to Nigeria’s electoral authority, INEC. These claims arose following the release of President Tinubu’s academic records by CSU.
One of Atiku Abubakar’s lawyers, Kalu Kalu also restated these claims at a press conference last week. However, the BBC Disinformation Team say that after taking a close look at some of the most widely circulated claims, there was no evidence to prove any certificate forgery.
Atiku Abubakar sought evidence for his case by making a request to a US court to compel CSU to provide President Tinubu’s academic records.
While the President’s lawyers had initially opposed this request on privacy grounds, the US court ruled in favor of the request, leading to the release of several documents. The documents requested by Atiku Abubakar were:
1. A copy of any diploma issued by CSU in 1979
2. A copy of the diploma CSU gave to Mr Tinubu in 1979
3. 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
4. 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.
In line with the judge’s ruling, Atiku’s lawyer, Angela Liu last week questioned CSU’s Current Registrar, Caleb Westberg, in a deposition.
Claims of forgery largely centered on a comparison between the diploma President Tinubu submitted to INEC and the 1979 diplomas released by CSU.
Critics argued that the President’s diploma appeared different from the CSU diplomas, which raised concerns about its authenticity. However, the analysis by the BBC’s Disinformation Team found no evidence to substantiate these claims.
The President’s team submitted a copy of the diploma in question to the BBC, which was found to be a black and white photocopy that matched the one submitted to INEC.
During Mr Westberg’s deposition, Mr Atiku’s lawyer focused on the copy of the diploma President Tinubu handed to the electoral commission and suggested that it was unlike any of the diplomas released by CSU.
However, while Mr Westberg agreed with Ms Liu that the diploma in question does not look like the samples from 1979, he stated that the certificate actually looks like three of the diplomas CSU released to Mr Abubakar. BBC Disinformation Team’s analysis confirmed this.
It turns out that the discrepancy in the appearance of the diploma is down to it having been re-issued in the 1990s.
Furthermore, allegations that President Tinubu’s diploma was not from CSU because it lacked the phrase “with honors” were debunked. The team confirmed that President Tinubu’s diploma did contain the phrase “with honors,” which was authenticated by CSU.
Amid these findings, the documents did raise questions about the President’s birth date. Different documents presented inconsistent information about his date of birth. President Tinubu’s official birth date is 29 March 1952.
His transcript from CSU has his date of birth as 29 March 1954. His undergraduate admissions application form has his date of birth as 29 March 1955.
Mr Atiku’s lawyer said during Mr Westberg’s deposition, that on the forms submitted to INEC, Mr Tinubu had given his date of birth as 29 March 1952.
Mr Westberg, during cross-examination, responded that the discrepancies could have been due to human error.
Another allegation making the rounds on social media is that the person who attended CSU with the name Bola A Tinubu is female.
Mr Tinubu attended Southwest College (now known as Richard J. Daley College) before transferring to CSU in 1976. In Southwest’s transcript, there is an “F” (for “female”) in the column where gender is indicated, leading to claims that it was a woman who attended the school and Mr Tinubu “stole her identity”. Mr Atiku’s lawyer, Mr Kalu, alluded to this in a press conference last week.
However, in his deposition, Mr Westberg stressed that there was no confusion about the gender of the person who attended CSU as he was a male named Bola A Tinubu. He said the university used other factors other than the name to authenticate the student’s identity.
According to him, the Social Security Number (SSN) in the transcript from Southwest College matches what it has in other documents in which the student’s gender is clearly marked as male.
The documents also raised another discrepancy concerning the secondary school attended, one of the documents stated that Mr Tinubu attended Government College Lagos in 1970. However, information available on the school website stated that it was only founded in 1974.
President Tinubu’s team and Atiku Abubakar’s team have yet to respond to inquiries by the BBC Disinformation Team about these discrepancies.
