Following the controversies surrounding President Bola Tinubu's academic records from the Chicago State University (CSU), the minister of foreign affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, has said the administration cannot waste time on such "trivial matters".
Tuggar, who stated this yesterday on Channels Television's breakfast show, Sunrise Daily, said the controversy does not cast a shadow on some of the president's recent international engagements.
The minister argued that a former president, Muhammadu Buhari, experienced a similar issue
He said, "There is a tendency to always try to distract people with such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don't have time to waste on that
"Nobody is wasting time about certificate qualification for somebody who has been a governor of a state, served two terms, and has been on the national stage as a politician.
"You remember that (former) President Buhari had to go through the same thing, where people were actually questioning whether he went to secondary school or not. Someone who had classmates and was the captain? He was a head boy."
Tuggar insisted that during Tinubu's recent international meetings, no one showed interest in the saga.
"The foreign leaders that we've been engaging and the international organisations clearly are disinterested (sic) in wasting time on such. We pay no mind to that," he stated.
The minister stated that due to the critical situation of the nation, Nigerians should not be obsessed by certification but concentrate on development.
"With the economic challenges we are facing, we shouldn't be wasting time about some certificate; whether there is a 'T' missing or an 'I' hasn't been dotted. That shouldn't be our primary focus at the moment," he argued.
LEADERSHIP recalls that the presidential candidate of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, had approached the US District Court in Northern Illinois to compel the Chicago State University (CSU) to release President Tinubu's academic records, arguing that it would boost his suit challenging his election in the February 25 poll.
The university on Monday released to Atiku's legal team a cache of documents connected to Tinubu's education at the institution and copies of certificates with redacted names issued to other persons about the same time the Nigerian president finished from the school in 1979.
The documents also contained Tinubu's admission records and a letter dated June 27, 2022 confirming that he attended the university from August 1977 to June 1979, majoring in accounting. The letter said Tinubu was awarded Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Honours on June 22, 1979.
However, the Atiku team is arguing that the CSU certificate that Tinubu presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was not issued to him by the university and that he had forged it.
Tinubu's Certificate Not Forged - Presidency
However, the senior special assistant on media and publicity to President Bola Tinubu, Temitope Ajayi, has said that the certificate submitted by the president to INEC was authentic and not forged as insinuated by the opposition.
According to him, the Chicago State University confirmed that the president had not submitted a fake result to INEC.
In a post of his X page (formerly Twitter), Ajayi stated that the CSU affirmed under oath that Tinubu attended and graduated from the institution and that the school did not handle replacements for lost certificates.
He said there was no truth in the forgery claim, adding that no person can forge a certificate he already had.
"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 cannot forge the academic records he possesses. You can only forge what you don't have."
LEADERSHIP reports that a part of Ajayi's claims may run contrary to Tinubu's and the university's positions. Tinubu had in an earlier election cycle claimed he had lost his certificates during the military crackdown on pro-democracy activists, while the CSU had reported that Tinubu had required a replacement copy of his certificate but failed to puck it up.
CSU Records Can't Help Atiku's Case Before Supreme Court - SANs
Meanwhile, a senior lawyer, Kunle Adegoke, has said the records from the Chicago State University on President Bola Tinubu's academy records have no relevance or usefulness in assisting the case of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and that of the PDP.
Adegoke described it as a pure waste of time, energy and resources designed to heat up the polity unnecessarily.
He said, "The appellants had made their case before the court of appeal, which sat as the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, and the court had decided the issues raised.
"The fundamental question is whether the petitioners ever raised any allegation of forgery of academic records against President Tinubu in that petition. A brief look at that petition would show that they did not challenge the president's qualifications in that case.
"The Constitution recognises grounds for challenging a candidate's qualifications for an election, and there are grounds for asking for the disqualification of a candidate declared winner of an election. But in their case, neither the qualifying nor disqualifying grounds were ever reflected in their petition.
According to him, it is a standard rule that one cannot bring a new pleading after the timeframe allowed by the law to file a petition.
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That is why the Court of Appeal struck out those paragraphs where they mentioned qualifications without stating the facts upon which they are saying he is not qualified.
"The Supreme Court cannot hear new facts which were not pleaded at the lower court or that were never even part of the petition in the first place," he stated.
Meanwhile, Wahab Shittu SAN has agreed with Adegoke that Atiku's case may have collapsed entirely.
Shittu gave several reasons for his conclusion, part of which is that the Chicago State University exists and that there are proof that President Tinubu attended the institution, so his claim is not a fabrication.
The senior lawyer also argued that Chicago State University has confirmed it issued certificates to the President in consequence of his attendance at the school and that the constitutional requirement for qualification to aspire for the presidency is at least a school certificate level or its equivalent.
He said, "the three diplomas issued by the university satisfy this requirement and the university has not denied issuing the certificate to Tinubu in 1979.
"The school merely says it does not keep duplicate copies of issued certificates. That is an administrative and internal arrangement of the University for which President Tinubu cannot be held responsible," he stated.
