A report by the BBC’s Global Disinformation Team has found no evidence of forgery in President Bola Tinubu’s academic records from Chicago State University (CSU), which were submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 2023 presidential election. This follows a controversy surrounding the authenticity of the documents.
The issue began when the CSU released President Tinubu’s academic records, which were widely circulated on social media. Some opposition party leaders, including his main rivals, Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, labeled the documents as fake.
Atiku filed a case in the US court, accusing President Tinubu of falsifying the CSU diploma of Bachelor of Science in Business Administration awarded in 1979, which he had submitted to INEC. The court case aimed to determine the authenticity of the academic records.
In the trial, Atiku requested various documents, including a copy of any diploma issued by CSU in 1979, a copy of the diploma awarded to President Tinubu in 1979, copies of diplomas with similar font, seal, signatures, and wording as what CSU awarded to President Tinubu in 1979, and documents from CSU certified by Jamar Orr, a university staff member at the time, within the 12 months from August 1, 2022.
President Tinubu’s legal team argued that these documents were not relevant to Atiku’s appeal against him at the Supreme Court. However, Magistrate Jeffrey Gilbert ordered CSU to provide all relevant and non-privileged documents to Atiku’s legal team within two days.
The BBC’s findings suggest that there is no evidence of forgery in President Tinubu’s academic records. The Social Security Number in the CSU transcript matches the information in other documents that indicate President Tinubu’s gender as male.
The documents released had raised questions about President Tinubu’s birthdate and his secondary school education. One document stated that President Tinubu attended Government College Lagos in 1970, while information on the school’s website indicates that it was founded in 1974.
Furthermore, the report revealed discrepancies in the birth dates in some of the released documents compared to President Tinubu’s official birth date of March 29, 1952. President Tinubu’s CSU transcript shows his birth date as March 29, 1954, while his undergraduate admissions application form lists his birth date as March 29, 1955.
During deposition, Atiku’s lawyer questioned the date of birth on the certificate, as President Tinubu’s official birthdate is March 29, 1952. The CSU official, Westberg, suggested that the discrepancies might have been due to human error. The report emphasizes that while there are discrepancies in the documents, it does not find evidence of forgery in President Tinubu’s academic records from CSU.