Amid taunts from political rivals of his failure to present credible academic records and history, a classmate of President Bola Tinubu at the Chicago State University, CSU, Durojaiye Ogunsanya has emerged saying that they graduated from the same department in 1979.
Ogunsanya, a Public Affairs Analyst, spoke amid an ongoing battle between Tinubu and his Peoples Democratic Party, PDP rival, Atiku Abubakar over the president’s academic records.
Ogunsanya, who spoke on TVC’s ‘This Morning’ show also said that Tinubu became president of the Accounting Society before they left the school.Ogunsanya said, “We met in a school: Chicago State University; we were in the same department, College of Accounting, Business and Administration, with major in accounting, and we were in the same class together and graduated. He did attend the university and graduated in 1979 as I did. So I’m here to testify that he did attend the University, and he was a good student.”
On what he made of people saying that Tinubu did not graduate from the school, Ogunsanya said, “People were being mischievous in the first place. Because he was a governor for 8 years, somebody who worked for Mobil several years and you contesting that he didn’t go to university. Is that possible? I cannot imagine how that is possible. Sometimes the President might be embellishing, but that does not mean that he didn’t attend the university. He has the record there for people to go and check to confirm all these things that he did.“I was a bonafide student. I first went to engineering school and nautical engineering. Okay. Then I decided no, it’s not for me. I changed college. That’s when I transfer. The beauty of it all in America is they make it easy for everybody. There is an opportunity for anybody. You can start from scratch and build yourself up. And you do it even with high school GED, they call it you take the exam. Once you pass it. You can apply to any college that go to junior college, which is for two years; there you can transfer your your credit to a four year college,” Ogunsanya said in reiterating that Tinubu was his classmate at CSU.
“I think that’s what the President did. He first went to Richard J college and then transfer the credit to a four year college, university. I didn’t go to college. I went to another Junior College. Then I transferred to go State University. And I met him there. When I met him there. One of the professors told me ‘Are you from Nigeria’, I said ‘yes’. ‘Do you know Bola?’ I said ‘no, I don’t know him’. He said ‘oh, you need to know Bola’.“Eventually we met and then I found out that he is from Nigeria and we clicked from there. And one other thing is that we want a member of the Accounting Society. When the time for election came, the president surprised me; that was the time he became the president of the club. People were even laughing at him with his accent, because he had Nigerian accent, but with this, he won as president of the club in 1978/79. Those are facts. Go and check it out. He was very social and ambitious even then. So I am not surprised that he has carved a niche for himself to become the president,” Ogunsanya said in asserting that he was Tinubu’s classmate at CSU.
