Chicago State University has confirmed the authenticity of President Tinubu’s records and certificates, as revealed in a collection of documents obtained.
The Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, had enlisted a US Court order to subpoena the university to provide records of Tinubu’s graduation in 1979.
The university in compliance on Monday submitted the documents to Abubakar’s legal team.
Despite insinuations that the President forged his certificates or had a forged identity, the full transcripts of the deposition given by the university’s registrar, Caleb Westberg, vindicated the President and put the rest to the controversies.
Westberg in the deposition provided details on how the university authenticated Tinubu’s documents, including a replacement certificate.
The 125-page deposition revealed that Westberg mentioned the university had been receiving inquiries about Tinubu’s records for the past 20 years, ranging from five to 30 requests per day.
The CSU Registrar in the deposition affirmed that Tinubu graduated from the institution in 1979, majoring in Accounting under business administration.
According to him the certificates presented by the university in 1979 bore similarities with the replacement diploma Tinubu obtained in 1999.
The university had provided other replacement diplomas with the same design, font, and logo as the one presented to Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Westberg noted that the institution possessed a reordered copy of the President’s replacement diploma. He also clarified that the university held copies of the President’s transcripts as additional evidence of his scholarship.
“In general in the US, the diploma is a ceremonial document. In other countries, it is a more official document. For us, it is not,” he noted.
Gender Argument
Central to the controversies was the speculation that some of the documents addressed Tinubu as a female.
Examining Westberg’s testimony, Abubakar’s attorney, Angela Liu, asked, “So how are you sure that Bola A. Tinubu, listed here as female, is the same Bola A. Tinubu, who is President of Nigeria?”
Addressing the discrepancy, Westberg stated that the university was not confused about Tinubu’s gender.
“The university is not confused about that. We issued an admissions letter to Mr. Bola Tinubu. He applied as a male student. That is a part of the record,” he said.
Regarding the review of the SSN (social security number) on the document being circulated as showing Bola Tinubu as female, the registrar stated that it was clearly an error.
“Human errors happen,” the official commented.
When asked how the university concluded that President Tinubu was the same as the Bola Tinubu who attended the school in the 1970s, Westberg noted that the school reviewed materials, including Tinubu’s student file, addresses, names, fields of study, and other relevant details.
“The university would have reviewed all of these materials when we received them,” he stated in response to a question from Tinubu’s lawyer, Henderson.
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