Fact Checking Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Certificates and all

In the early days of the current democratic dispensation, a scandal broke out in the National Assembly. The Speaker of the House of Representative, 32 years old Salisu Buhari, was accused of presenting fake Toronto University certificates to INEC. After attempts to stonewall and brag his way through failed, he was forced to eat the humble pie, resign and go into political oblivion.

In the heat of that, some traducers of the then Governor of Lagos state, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, went to town with scurrilous stories of his past, alleging that he never went to Government College, Ibadan; that his name could not be found when a search was done at the University of Chicago, USA, which he also claimed to have attended in the forms filed with INEC. But unlike Salisu Buhari, Tinubu who had earlier contested and was elected as Senator, which means he also filed his qualifications with INEC then, mobilised elements in the media, and among his then evolving political family, to kill the scandal.

His claim that an aide filed the documents for him and may have wrongly input University of Chicago instead of Chicago State University, was sold to the public and damage control measures were fully deployed to kill the scandal. What they couldn’t kill, however, are two issues: the secondary School he attended and his real name. As at that time, his age, his health and the humongous wealth he now controlled were not in contention.

What sparked the latest uproar around the APC presidential candidate is the unbelievable claims in his INEC form which indicate that he never attended any primary or secondary Schools. Yet in the past, in earlier forms, he stated he attended St Paul Children’s Home School, Ibadan (1958-64); Government College Ibadan 1965 -1968; Richard DaleyCollege, Chicago, from 1969 to 1971; then to Chicago state university and University of Chicago.

Dr FEMI ARIBISALA, TheNewsGuru.com, TNG, egghead and hard-hitting columnist who delights in speaking truth to power, reminds me, and Nigerians in a recent tweet, of an article I published for him in the Vanguard Newspapers where I was editor. Said he: “I wrote in 2014 that Tinubu’s affidavit that he attended Government College Ibadan, GCI, from 1965 and 1968 is false. I was in GCI from 1962-68, and Tinubu was not there. Tinubu now tells INEC he did not go to primary or secondary school. This means he committed perjury.”

While Chicago State University confirmed that Tinubu graduated with a degree in Business Administration with specialty in accounting, on June 22, 1979, the University of Chicago did not list him as one of their alumni. Indeed, a personal check I did of the name of Tinubu, in the published list of alumni of the university returned a blank.

It is perhaps to avoid the kind of questions, and uproar which greeted his claims about being a student at Government College, Ibadan, as neither he or nor his associates have been able to prove that indeed he was an alumnus of the College by naming his classmates, teachers, etc., that he cleverly omitted to name any school. In an affidavit he submitted with his forms, Tinubu averred that:

“I went on self-exile from October 1994 to October, 1998. When I returned I discovered that all my property, including all the documents relating to my qualifications and my certificates in respect of paragraph three above, were looted by unknown persons.
“My house was the target of a series of searches by various security agents from the time the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was forced to adjourn following the military takeover of government on 17th November, 1993.
“I was the Chairman of the Senate committee on appropriation, banking and finance. I was also a plaintiff in one of the two suits against the interim national government of 1993.
“I went on exile when it became clear to me that my life was in danger”

This is where Nigerians miss erudite, radical lawyer, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, (1938-2009). When the secondary and university scandal blew open, he pursued the case up to the Supreme Court which dismissed the matter barefaced on technical grounds, rather than on the merit of the case. Were he to be alive, a lot of the shenanigans going on now among politicians would have been tested in court. The fear of Gani Fawehinmi was the beginning of political wisdom then.

There is no doubt that were he to be alive, the current contentions around the person of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu would by now be before a court of competent jurisdiction. The recent forms which the Asiwaju Tinubu filled and submitted to INEC after he emerged the flag bearer of the All Progressives Congress, in which he clearly left out the primary and secondary schools he attended, would have been tested in the courts as Fawehinmi would have by now hurled him before the justices for perjury.

This is more so as the Electoral Act, 2022 in Section 29(5) and (6) of the Electoral Act, 2022, ousted the jurisdiction of State and Federal Capital Territory Abuja High Courts with the jurisdiction to hear a pre-election suit predicated on false declaration and submission of a false document to the Independent National Electoral Commission. The new Electoral Act, says a dispute over the submission of false information in an affidavit and any documents to the Independent National Electoral Commission by a candidate is an intra-party dispute. It goes on to state that only a member of the political party who took part in the primaries has locus to challenge the nomination of the candidate suspected to have submitted false information and/or document to the Independent National Electoral Commission.

For example, Section 29 stipulate as follows: “(5) Any aspirant who participated in the primaries of his political party who has reasonable grounds to believe that any information given by his political party’s candidate in the affidavit or any document submitted by that candidate in relation to his constitutional requirements to contest the election is false, may file a suit at the Federal High Court against that candidate seeking a declaration that the information contained in the affidavit is false.

(6) “Where the Court determines that any of the information contained in the affidavit is false only as it relates to constitutional requirements of eligibility, the Court shall issue an order disqualifying the candidate and the sponsoring political party and then declare the candidate with the second highest number of valid votes and who satisfies the constitutional requirement as the winner of the election.”

Tinubu’s opponents have been having a field day in the social media as none of the traditional newspapers has bothered to look into the many inconsistencies which the APC candidate has been fielding the nation.

But it bears repeating that, in the eyes of the law, Tinubu is eminently qualified having gotten a university degree. According to his campaign legal stand, all the noise about his primary and secondary schools’ omission amount to nothing.

As a conclusion, however, let us examine the issues swirling around the APC flag bearer and try and fact check them.

FACT CHECKING BOLA AHMED TINUBU AND HIS CERTIFICATES
Surname : Disputed: some claim it is Yekini Amoda Ogunlere from Iragbiji who had the good fortune of having Iyaloja, Abibatu Mogaji adopt him as a son. She was said not to have had biological children of her own. A version of the story indicates that he adopted the name, Bola Tinubu, to enable him travel to America following the death of the original Bola Tinubu, a female. He added Ahmed later to now fully entrench the name. Nevertheless, his birth name was not Bola Tinubu. This story appears credible. That notwithstanding it is not a crime to change or add to ones name.
State of origin : originally Osun state. But for the peculiar Nigerian politics, this should be of no consequence. He adopted Lagos state as his state of origin when he wanted to run for Senate.
Age : Disputed: he is 70 years old officially. Bola Tinubu’s age is one of the albatrosses he has had to bear. To go to America, every information had to tally. Hence, the 70 years he now claims may have belonged to the original Bola Tinubu. Both enemies and acquaintances agree that his real age is over 70years
Primary School: Undisclosed now. Before, it was St Paul Children’s Home School, Ibadan. No longer in existence.
Secondary School: Unknown. He earlier filled Government College, Ibadan. If he indeed went to Government College, Ibadan, it must have been with his original name which he had to drop to assume the cognomen, Bola Tinubu. A simple affidavit, were he not to be in the eye of the storm could have rectified this anomaly. But there is a huge chance that he never went to GCI as no one in the class year, 1968, that he claimed has come out to confirm that he, indeed, was their classmate. To compound it, he too has not been able to name any of his supposed classmates.
*Universities: Did Bola Ahmed Tinubu go to school? The answer is yes. There was no way he could have gotten employment with Arthur Anderson-Cooper and later with Mobil Oil, without the prerequisite qualifications. We confirmed that he was indeed a student at Chicago State University. But University of Chicago, like President Obasanjo would say, has K-Leg. Personal checks turned blank replies meaning the school has no record of him attending the University.

*Certificates: Missing. This is a convenient lie. Assuming but not conceding that he indeed lost the certificates, could he not have gotten them reissued by the schools or attestation to that effect? Why has he not done so to avoid all the hoopla around his academic qualifications beats the imagination.
State of Health : Not known. But he has had some disturbing times in the public recently.
Nevertheless, should he emerge winner in the 2023 Presidential Election, it means he will be the second certificate-less president, after Muhammadu Buhari. He will also be another president who will be needing medical attention abroad, regularly.