PEOPLES GAZETTE
Minutes after denying the diploma President Bola Tinubu submitted to Nigeria’s electoral commission, INEC, emanated from Chicago State University (CSU), Registrar Caleb Westberg, in his deposition on Tuesday, said it is not unusual for companies to generate bogus academic certificates for willing buyers on the Internet.
Mr Westberg stated under oath in response to questions from Atiku Abubakar’s attorneys that the institution had no knowledge of the document Mr Tinubu had submitted to INEC in June 2022 as part of the mandatory requirements for presidential candidates.
He did, however, suggest that the Nigerian leader might have obtained the certificate from online businesses that specialise in forgery.
The CSU registrar answered “yes” when asked whether he had “ever seen a diploma purporting to be from CSU but was actually a forgery.” He added that he was aware of entities that are experts in generating fake credentials.
When pressed further to name such entities, Mr Westberg responded that those looking to use the services of such forgery vendors can “easily” locate them on the internet with a simple Google search.
“I cannot provide a name of an entity that does such, however, you can Google this easily,”Mr Westberg stated under oath Tuesday evening. “There are many companies that do this for folks.”
Mr Tinubu has been caught in a forgery storm after glaring inconsistencies were discovered between the CSU certificate he submitted to INEC in June 2022 and the one CSU gave Nigerian lawyer Mike Enahoro-Ebah in response to a previous subpoena in August 2022.
The discrepancies prompted Mr Abubakar — who lost his presidency bid to Mr Tinubu — to approach the U.S. Court for the Northern District of Illinois for a subpoena directing discovery of the Nigerian leader’s records and shed light on the matter.
Mr Tinubu desperately opposed the request to the extent of making an emergency appeal that his life could suffer severe and irreparable damage if his opponent lays hands on his educational records.
But Judge Nancy Maldonado overruled his objections and asked CSU to turn over all the sought records on Monday and also avail their officials for deposition on Tuesday.
Based on Mr Westberg’s testimony, Peoples Gazette can authoritatively report that President Tinubu submitted a forged certificate to the electoral commission in June 2022, an offence that carries heavy sanctions that include probable termination of his election victory given that Section 131(i) of the Constitution which explicitly states that
no one would be legitimately elected president of Nigeria if the person “has presented a forged certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission.”
Mr Abubakar intends to tender the evidence of forgery at Nigeria’s Supreme Court where the final battle line has been drawn in his determined quest to overturn Mr Tinubu’s victory, particularly after a lower court said his petitions were too weak to unseat the president.
Presidential aides including Temitope Ajayi have attempted to emotionally blackmail Mr Abubakar into giving up his quest, recounting instances of how Mr Tinubu offered him succour when he suffered oppression during his vice presidency tenure under then president Olusegun Obasanjo.
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