On Monday, social media went into overdrive after the Chicago State University released academic records of President Bola Tinubu following a court order.
Atiku Abubakar, Tinubu’s archrival in the 2023 presidential election had applied for the academic records in order to aid his appeal at the supreme court against the declaration of Tinubu as the winner of the disputed election.
The release which was consistent with the court order revealed seven key facts, some consistent with Tinubu’s argument while some have left more questions than answers.
The first discovery is that Chicago State University validated one Bola A. Tinubu to have attended its university.
In the record studied by THE WHISTLER, the University through its Office of the Registrar affirmed that Bola A. Tinubu attended the university “from August 1977 through June 1979.”
The said Bola A. Tinubu was “awarded a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Honors on June 22, 1979,” the school wrote in the documents released.
It’s inconsistent with another certificate Tinubu allegedly submitted to the electoral umpire that he studied accounting with 1st class honour from CSU.
The registrar also swore to this revelation under oath, which validated Tinubu’s claim that he was indeed a student in the school.
Secondly, the CSU released Tinubu’s college transcript which showed that the pre-qualification papers to the university belonged to a woman.
The university said Tinubu used a Southwest College transcript and was admitted to Chicago State University.
But the College transcript was marked ‘f’, denoting female while the Bola A. Tinubu, Nigerians know, is a ‘m’, male.
Again, a fundamental discovery from the College transcript showed date and social security number, SSN with the question being asked who the SSN belongs to.
Thirdly, Tinubu had submitted a CSU certificate to INEC in aid of his biodata when filing to contest the presidential election in 2022 and the one he submitted to the electoral umpire in 1999.
But the certificate the CSU released on Monday showed clear cases of inconsistencies as its redacted sample certificate it issued in 1979, the year Tinubu purportedly graduated from the school, had different fonts, logo, characters among others differences.
The fourth discovery from the CSU documents has shown the Bola A. Tinubu who applied to Southwest College for an associate degree in 1975 claimed to have attended Government College, Lagos.
To aid his admission, the Bola A. Tinubu presented a 1970 GCE A-level result with grades ‘E’ in Chemistry and Biology, and an ‘F’ in Physics.
Findings based on available records showed that Government College, Lagos, was established in 1974, which strengthened the argument from the president’s critics that there’s a case of forgery.
A careful study of the GCE A-level result raises another question as Bola A. Tinubu, who sat for the exam, did so as an HSC student.
It has been revealed that HSC used to be a two-year study after 5 years of secondary school education, meaning that the owner must have graduated from secondary school at least in 1968.
Fifth, Bola A. Tinubu’s Chicago State University admission letter was dated August 23, 1977. It was addressed to ‘Mr. Tinubu’ and not ‘Ms.’ or ‘Miss Tinubu’, raising another confusion why some other documents were marked ‘f’, female.
The sixth revelation from the records is that the Nigerian president claimed publicly that he was born on March 29, 1952, which is inconsistent with the birthday recorded in his CSU transcript, which showed he was born on March 29, 1954.
Curiously, the spaces for birthday in the Southwest College transcript and secondary education transcript he submitted to CSU were left blank.
A simple interrogation showed that if President Tinubu was born in 1954, he graduated from high school aged 14 years even though his camp had claimed he never attended secondary school and only sat for senior school certificate studying from home like the late Obafemi Awolowo, premier of western region.
The seventh inconsistency seen from the records released by CSU is the errors in the Bola A. Tinubu’s name. The Bola A. Tinubu’s last name was misspelt in several documents CSU released.
There was a ‘THUBV’, ‘Tinububu’, among other inconsistencies from the records released.
The CSU is expected by the Atiku camp to provide answers to these inconsistencies and the coming days may likely clear the air about a Nigerian president whose identity has been a subject of litigation and controversy since 1999.