Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi tore into President Bola Tinubu Wednesday after an American university said it could not authenticate the certificate the Nigerian leader submitted for his elections.
“Uninformed outsiders now see every Nigerian as a fraudster, certificate forger or an identity thief,” Mr Obi said in Abuja, at his first press conference on the matter.
He said, “Chief Ahmed Bola Tinubu’s many other lingering identity question marks have further worsened Nigeria’s less-than-glorious image internationally.”
President Tinubu has faced raging criticism after the Chicago State University last week confirmed he attended the school between 1977 and 1979 but failed to confirm the certificate he presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission. Many Nigerians have accused the president of forging his papers.
The Nigerian constitution disqualifies any Nigerian from an elective position on account of submission of a forged document.
A long case
The revelation followed a legal campaign in the U.S. by former vice president Atiku Abubakar. After refusing for months to hand Mr Tinubu’s documents over, the university did so on the order of a US. District court.
The papers showed the diplomas issued by the school the year Mr Tinubu graduated differed from the one he submitted to INEC. The documents had other contradictions: the school addressed Tinubu as “Mr” in his admission letter, yet elsewhere “F” was ticked as his sex, suggesting the student was female.
The school’s registrar, Caleb Westberg, said the gender box might have been ticked in error. Told by Mr Abubakar’s lawyer that the diploma provided to student Tinubu in 1979 could not have been the one the president submitted to INEC because one of the signatories did not arrive at CSU until later, Westberg replied, “That’s correct.”
Reintroducing the president
Mr Abubakar, who is the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, and Mr Obi want Mr Tinubu’s election nullified.
Mr Abubakar has filed to submit the new detail to the Supreme Court which is expected to rule on the Feb. 25 election outcome, after the appeal court dismissed the petition in September.
In his statement on Wednesday, Mr Obi said the president should “reintroduce himself to the nation he governs” and save the country and himself “protracted embarrassment and undue anxiety.”
“I therefore, respectfully and humbly, call on him to immediately and personally mount the rostrum of his high office to perform a simple task, once and for all,” Mr Obi said.
He asked Mr Tinubu to give his true names, names of schools he attended and certificates obtained and indicate whether he changed his names at any anytime and the circumstances.
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