The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 general elections, Atiku Abubakar, has filed new documents against President Bola Tinubu before the Supreme Court in which he accused the President of forgery and lying under oath, and should therefore be disqualified and removed from office.
The evidence filed by the former vice president was the academic records of Tinubu, which were handed over to him by the Chicago State University on Monday following the order of an Illinois court in the United States of America instructing the institution to release the academic records as requested by Atiku.
Tinubu is Ahmed, but the NYSC certificate Bola Ahmed Tinubu submitted to INEC has Adekunle. I don’t know where Adekunle emerged from.”
An aide to the President, Tunde Rahman, in an article, said the controversy raised by the certificate saga was meant to embarrass Tinubu as the ex-Vice President was overwhelmed by his inordinate ambition to govern the country.
While describing Atiku’s quest at the Supreme Court using the academic records of the President released to him by the US as a wild goose chase, the presidential aide said, “Overwhelmed by his inordinate ambition, the failed PDP presidential candidate also shamelessly called traditional, religious, community and political leaders in the country, including Labour Party’s Peter Obi and NNPP’s Senator Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, to rally round him in his political vendetta against President Tinubu.”
While faulting Atiku for saying he was fighting a moral battle, Rahman wrote, “And you wonder, what morality Alhaji Atiku was preaching. This is the same man who was indicted in the 2009 conviction of his accomplice, former United States Congressman William Jefferson, over bribery charges. The same man whose principal, former President Obasanjo, wrote a damaging testimonial on and whose years in Customs were signposted by corruption allegations.”
He reiterated the testimony of the Registrar of the Chicago State University, Caleb Westberg, that Tinubu attended the institution as a male, adding that all available records pointed to the fact that he entered the university as a man and graduated with honours as such.
On the insinuation that the certificate presented by Tinubu to the Independent National Electoral Commission was fake, the presidential aide said, “Nowhere in the interrogation did Westberg use the word fake or forged as Atiku’s lawyer tried to make him say so. The fact is there is no scintilla of doubt that President Tinubu attended and graduated from the CSU.
“President Tinubu honourably earned his degree and he had no reason to forge the certificate of a degree he had in his kitty. He graduated Summa Cum Laude, with distinction. He was on the Vice Chancellor’s Honours List for all his years in the school. Insinuation by anyone that he forged a certificate he worked for is sad and misleading.”
Rahman said the former vice-president was a sore loser chasing shadows with his vow to present new evidence at the Supreme Court.
He stated, “In the final analysis, it is yet unclear how Atiku plans to benefit from whatever he claims to have brought back from the US. Certificate forgery was not pleaded in his election petition now at the Supreme Court. Without being a lawyer, this is a civil case and I understand you can’t make new pleas or present new evidence in a case that has passed the court of first instance and is at present on appeal at the Supreme Court.
“What the Waziri Adamawa has demonstrated in all of his Shenanigans is that he is a sore loser. Will he gain what he failed to get at the ballot through his present indecent and unpatriotic overseas search and unfounded and hollow discovery, making a mountain where there is even no molehill, unnecessarily heating up the polity and denigrating the Justices of the Supreme Court? I don’t think so!”
