The Presidency on Wednesday clarified that the certificate submitted by President Bola Tinubu to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was authentic and not forged as being insinuated in some quarters.
Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Temitope Ajayi, in a reaction said the Chicago State University (CSU) confirmed that the president didn’t submit a fake result to INEC.
He 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.
According to him, there is no iota of truth in the forgery claim, adding that no person can forge a certificate he already has.
In his 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.”
Following petition by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 general elections, Atiku Abubakar, CSU on Monday released Tinubu’s academic records on the orders of the court.
Atiku had requested the documents to back his allegation of forgery against Tinubu.
The allegation of forgery was one of those dismissed by the presidential election tribunal in the suit Atiku filed to challenge Tinubu’s election in February, 2023.
