Tinubu acknowledges mistakes on certificate from Chicago University, blames clerk

With the admitting of inaccuracies on the documents, the legal procedure started by People’s Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar suing Chicago State University (CSU) for the discovery of President Bola Tinubu’s academic records has taken on a new twist.

However, in their response to Atiku’s inquiry, President Tinubu’s attorneys accused the clerk of the 156-year-old institution for the mistakes in Atiku’s academic records and certificate.

Tinubu has until August 23 to submit a formal document explaining why Atiku Abubakar, the petitioner, should not be given access to his data, according to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

However, in response to the court’s order, Tinubu’s attorney claimed that an unnamed university clerk “unfortunately” made mistakes regarding the dates the institution listed on his recently issued certificate and when he actually graduated, leading to “the appearance of differences.”

Tinubu’s new claim was presented to Jeffery Gilbert, the judge presiding over the case in the Chicago-based United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Atiku had demanded that the institution produce Tinubu’s academic records because he thought that doing so would clarify the issues surrounding Tinubu’s educational claims.

The credentials that Tinubu provided to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have faced issues with their veracity, and a document that went viral in the 1970s claimed that the institution had enrolled a female student named Bola Tinubu, who was born on March 29, 1954.

President Tinubu stated that he was born on March 29, 1952, but he has previously stated that he was actually born in 1954 on various occasions.

While running for governor of Lagos State in 1999, he made the later-retracted claim that he had attended Government College Ibadan among other schools in Nigeria.

After it was determined that additional schools he listed under oath in his 1999 INEC form CF001 did not exist anywhere in Nigeria, he has recently had his primary and secondary education purged from his records.

But the records that Atiku is requesting demonstrate the early education qualifications that Tinubu submitted to Chicago University prior to being accepted to the university.

According to Atiku, Tinubu responded to a previous subpoena with contradicting allegations made in Nigeria and at the institution.

A portion of Tinubu’s response, which was signed by his attorneys Oluwole Afolabi and Christopher Carmichael, is quoted as saying, “Unfortunately, CSU made multiple mistakes in replying to the illegal and invalid subpoena.

“CSU issued a new diploma for Bola A. Tinubu, but incorrectly wrote the date of graduation as June 27, 1979.

“The correct date was June 22, 1979, but that scrivener’s error – along with a change in the CSU logo, the font on the diploma, and leadership at CSU who signed the diploma, created the appearance of differences between an earlier issued diploma and the one issued in response to the 2022 subpoena.”

Atiku had sued to obtain Tinubu’s school records under a U.S. statute that allows documents available in the U.S. to be subpoenaed for use as evidence in a foreign court.

He argued that Tinubu had presented contradictory claims in Nigeria and the CSU, in responding to a previous subpoena, had issued documents that contradicted what Tinubu had entered under oath in Nigeria.

However, Tinubu’s lawyers, led by Oluwole Afolabi and Christopher Carmichael, argued that the August 2022 subpoena that was issued following a request by a Nigerian lawyer Mike Enahoro-Ebah was “illegal” because he had no valid grounds to seek the documents, especially under education privacy rights.

The lawyers, nonetheless, admitted the documents indeed emanated from the CSU, but an unnamed clerk had mistakenly typed the graduation date.

“Unfortunately, in responding to the illegal and invalid subpoena, CSU made several errors,” Tinubu’s attorneys said.

“CSU issued a new diploma for Bola A. Tinubu, but incorrectly wrote the date of graduation as June 27, 1979.”

The lawyers also said changes in school-authorised signatories and logos, alongside other anomalies like the fonts of the certificate, all combined to generate an appearance of wrongdoing.

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