The BBC's Global Disinformation Team has said it found no evidence that the Chicago State University (CSU) diploma certificate President Bola Ahmed Tinubu submitted to the country's electoral commission was forged.
Allegations that President Tinubu's certificate was faked went viral on social media following the CSU's release of his academic records last week.
The BBC Team comprising Olaronke Alo, Fouziyya Tukur and Chiagozie Nwonwu - all bearing Nigerian names - said it had looked at some of the most widely circulated claims.
Following February's presidential election, Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has approached the Supreme Court in Nigeria seeking to have President Bola Ahmed Tinubu disqualified after accusing him of submitting a forged CSU diploma certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
To obtain evidence for his case in Nigeria, Abubakar had approached a US court in August, requesting it to compel CSU to release Tinubu's academic records ahead of a trial at the apex court.
Tinubu's lawyers had opposed the discovery application, citing privacy concerns and saying releasing the documents could cause him severe and irreparable damage, but the US court rejected his plea.
The documents requested by Abubakar were: A copy of any diploma issued by CSU in 1979; a copy of the diploma CSU gave to Tinubu in 1979; copies of diplomas with the same font, seal, signatures, and wording awarded to other students that are similar to what CSU awarded to Tinubu in 1979; and documents from CSU that were certified by Jamar Orr, who was then a staff member of CSU, in the 12 months from 1 August 2022.
In response to request one, CSU submitted seven diplomas covering different disciplines with the names of the students redacted. According to the university's registrar, these diplomas had not been collected by the students.
In response to request two, CSU stated that it could not find the diploma they issued to Mr Tinubu in 1979 because they do not keep copies of diplomas already collected by students.
In response to request three, CSU stated that it produced for Mr Tinubu a replacement diploma dated 27 June 1979. It also released diplomas awarded to other students that bore similar font, seal, signatures and wordings as Mr Tinubu's diplomas.
In response to request four, CSU submitted other academic documents initially attested to and released by Mr Orr.
In line with the judge's ruling, Mr Abubakar's lawyer Angela Liu last week questioned Caleb Westberg, CSU's current registrar, in a deposition.
The BBC said it was given access to the deposition transcript by Mr Abubakar's spokesperson, Phrank Shaibu.
According to the BBC report, some people in Nigeria believe that the deposition and the diplomas released by CSU confirm that the diploma submitted to INEC by Mr Tinubu was forged. This claim was also repeated by one of Mr Abubakar's lawyers, Kalu Kalu, at a press conference.
"We found there was no evidence to support this claim," the BBC team said in its report.
It added that the CSU released several diplomas issued between 1979 and 2003 and the team analysed all of them. BBC said there are three different diplomas for Tinubu that it refers to throughout its analysis. These are: The original one from 1979, which he has said in the past was lost when he went into exile in the 1990s.
The second one: that he submitted to INEC - supposedly a replacement diploma from CSU.
Additionally, CSU holds another replacement diploma for Mr Tinubu that they say is probably from the early 2000s that he never collected.
The allegations on social media are based on a comparison between the document Mr Tinubu submitted to INEC and the 1979 diplomas released by CSU.
The BBC team went on: "During Mr Westberg's deposition, Mr Atiku's lawyer focused on the copy of the diploma President Tinubu handed to the electoral commission and suggested that it was unlike any of the diplomas released by CSU.
Another allegation making the rounds on social media is that the person who attended CSU with the name Bola A. Tinubu is female.
But BBC said in his deposition, Mr Westberg stressed that there was no confusion about the gender of the person who attended CSU as he was a male named Bola A. Tinubu. He said the university used other factors other than the name to authenticate the student's identity.
According to him, the Social Security Number (SSN) in the transcript from Southwest College matches what it had in other documents in which the student's gender is clearly marked as male.
The BBC report, however, admitted that the released documents did raise questions about Mr Tinubu's birth date and the secondary school he attended.
It reported that Atiku's lawyer said during Mr Westberg's deposition that on the forms submitted to INEC, Mr Tinubu had given his date of birth as 29 March, 1952.
However, Mr Westberg, during cross-examination, responded that the discrepancies could have been due to human error.
BBC said it contacted Tinubu's team for comment about these discrepancies and a spokesperson directed it instead to his party - the All Progressives Congress - and it then contacted Tinubu's presidential campaign spokesperson Festus Keyamo, who is also a minister in the government.
BBC Report Is A Hatchet Job - Atiku
However, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar's special assistant on public communications, Phrank Shaibu, has lambasted the BBC over its report claiming there is no evidence to show President Bola Tinubu's CSU certificate was forged.
In a statement yesterday, Shaibu described the resort as a hatchet job, adding that the outrage it had elicited from the generality of Nigerians was enough evidence to show that the BBC had goofed.
Atiku's aide said the BBC's move was not surprising as it tallied with a previous statement he had issued: that the Tinubu administration was set to unleash its full propaganda agenda.
Come clean on your identity - Obi
On his part, the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general elections, Peter Obi, has called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reveal his true identity.
According to Peter Obi, Tinubu should not leave his identity to be defined by his aides, adding that even the international community will want to know his true identity.
Speaking during a world press conference at the LP campaign office in Abuja, yesterday, Obi said Tinubu should save Nigeria from this present kind of embarrassment by revealing his true identity.
"Tinubu should humbly and respectfully reveal his identity. Let the world know your name, nationality, certificates. You should indicate clearly where you did your NYSC. If there was a change of name, make it clear. The task is for Tinubu to urgently reveal his identity. People want to know your true identity. A leader cannot leave his identity to be revealed by proxies," Obi said.
Obi disclosed that having followed the prolonged identity crisis that recently played out in the American Court System and the controversy surrounding the authenticity of the Chicago State University (CSU) credentials of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, he is distressed as a Nigerian.
According to him, in addition to the barrage of media frenzy that the matter has triggered at home and abroad, he has had the unwholesome burden of responding to embarrassing questions about Nigeria's overall credibility as a nation to privileged audience and individuals both at home and abroad in different parts of the world where he had traveled to lately.
"The controversy is unnecessary just as the implicit global embarrassment could have been avoided. In my opinion, Chief Bola Tinubu should have saved the nation and himself from this protracted embarrassment and undue anxiety.
"Even this late in the day, however, Chief Bola Tinubu still owes the nation and the world a simple debt of obligation which only he can discharge. I call on him to immediately and personally mount the rostrum of his present high office to perform a simple task once and for all time: he should re-introduce himself to the nation he governs and to the world for the avoidance of further doubt," Obi said.
"In his present capacity as a leader of a nation of over 200m Nigerians, his true identity is a matter of grave national and international interest. The people deserve to know with certainty the true identity of their leader and this overrides whatever rights he may have to personal privacy. In addition, the international community deserves to know the true identity of the person with whom they will engage in Nigeria.
"Having stood for an election to the elevated public office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Chief Bola Tinubu has implicitly undertaken to cede the rights of a private citizen in favour of a life of open disclosure of his true identity, and other circumstances that may be of public interest," he said, adding that his personal integrity and legitimacy of his present office demand no less.
Follow My Example, Atiku Tells President
On his part, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday told President Tinubu to follow lead in clarifying discrepancies in his identity and academic records.
Responding to the issue about his own identity, Atiku said while the inquiries are healthy because they seek to probe the truth, he also noticed that a lot of those who engage on the issue are supporters and aides of President Bola Tinubu.
Atiku, in a statement by his media aide, Paul Ibe, said, "To start with, Atiku Abubakar wrote his WAEC examination in 1968 with the name Siddiq Abubakar.
"Every elementary student of Islamic civilisation will not find it hard to decipher that both Siddiq and Atiku are names that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) gave to his bosom friend, Caliph Abubakar. Therefore, Siddiq and Atiku are names that have a historical link to one person in Islamic theology.
"Atiku Abubakar, knowing full well the importance of proper documentation, went ahead in 1973, more than 50 years ago, to depose to an affidavit that he would wish to be known officially as Atiku Abubakar and still keeps the original copy of that affidavit up to this day.
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However, he said while it has taken Atiku less than 24 hours to come out with full disclosure on his public records, President Tinubu has lived behind the veil for more than half of a century.
"Since 1970 when President Tinubu came under public record to have falsified his academic credentials by claiming to have graduated from a school that was nonexistent, the narrative of his public profile continues to get dirty and messier by the turn of every decade.
"It is thus in this note that we call on President Tinubu to follow the example of Atiku Abubakar by coming before Nigerians and the world to explain how he got about his name, his educational background, the history of his early years, the true owner of the Southwest College transcript with which he got admission to the CSU, why he refused to go and retake his pre-qualifying examination for the admission and, more importantly, how he came about the discredited and forged certificate of the Chicago State University that he submitted to INEC."
APC chides Obi
In its reaction, the All Progressives Congress (APC) said like a befuddled mind jolted out of deep slumber, the Labour Party's presidential candidate, Peter Obi hugged a podium to echo a script authored by Atiku Abubakar, his senior partner and co-traveller on a dark ignominious alley to nowhere.
In a statement by its national publicity secretary, Felix Morka, APC said that in his drivel, Obi demanded that the President reintroduce himself to Nigerians, as though the 8.9 million Nigerians who voted him last February were all groggy when they made their free democratic choice.
"Mr. Obi must know that President Tinubu does not need a re-introduction. He does not have any identity problem, except the one contrived by the Atikus and Peters of our political firmament.
"The 8.9 million Nigerians who voted him into office were, and remain, aware of his outstanding record and accomplishments as a defender of democracy, freedom, social and economic justice for over three decades."
APC maintained that as for President Tinubu's academic record at the Chicago State University, the facts are clear and settled except for those politically jaundiced by the trauma of electoral defeat.
"The Chicago State University has unequivocally stated over and over again, and in a deposition under oath by the Registrar, Caleb Westberg that President Tinubu attended the school and graduated with Honours," it said.
