President Bola Tinubu provided a certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, which, according to the Presidency, was not faked.
Temitope Ajayi, Senior Special Assistant to Tinubu on Media and Publicity, said that Chicago State University had verified that the president had not submitted a fictitious result to INEC.
Ajayi cited CSU’s sworn declaration that Tinubu attended and graduated from the university as well as the fact that the college does not handle replacements for misplaced diplomas.
He said there was no truth in the forgery claim, adding that no person can forge a certificate he already has.
Posting on X, Ajayi wrote: “We should be clear.
“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 can not forge the academic records he possesses. You can only forge what you don’t have.”
Following petition by the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Atiku Abubakar, CSU had released Tinubu’s academic records on orders of the court.
Atiku had requested the documents to back his allegation of forgery against Tinubu.
The allegation of forgery was one of those dismissed by the presidential election court in the suit Atiku filed to challenge Tinubu’s election.
