Chicago State University (CSU), United States, has claimed that an unnamed clerk may be to blame for the inconsistencies in President Bola Tinubu’s academic records, Peoples Gazette reported on Thursday.
Under oath, Caleb Westberg, the CSU registrar, was careful to use wording that implied the clerk who manually entered some information on Mr Tinubu’s credentials may or may not be at fault for the inaccuracies in the records.
Mr Westberg stated under oath in an affidavit submitted to the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, today that the difference in the date of award on the diploma versus the certified copy is likely the result of human error as the graduation date on the certified copy is typed in manually by a person and can be inaccurate.
Atiku Abubakar, who was after President Tinubu’s academic records, initially filed his case in a county court before withdrawing it to correctly file the suit in a federal court in Illinois, Chicago.
The affidavit’s intentional use of “is likely” reflects the school’s uncertainty and may also be interpreted as the registrar’s attempt to absolve himself of any wrongdoing should the Court find evidence of misconduct and decide to bring charges against the institution.
In August 2022, CSU had released Mr Tinubu’s records to Nigerian lawyer Mike Enahoro-Ebah who had requested the documents to put to bed rumours regarding the then-presidential candidate.
The 2022 records showed that a female Bola Tinubu had graduated from the school on July 27, 1979, which the school now dubs a clerical error and said the correct date is July 22, 1979.
Judge Jeffrey Gilbert of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago had issued an August 23 ultimatum for Mr Tinubu to provide reasons as to why his CSU academic records should not be given to Mr Abubakar, his main challenger in the February 25 polls.
In response, President Tinubu’s lawyers said that the inconsistencies should be blamed on the clerk, which seems to corroborate CSU’s stance on the matter.
That CSU has withheld the name of the so-called clerk responsible for the errors is fueling suspicions that the school may have something to cover up.
PDP’s Atiku Abubakar had earlier this month, requested court approval to subpoena President Tinubu’s files domiciled with CSU because he believed the documents would clarify the inconsistencies in the president’s background, including publicly-available documents that suggested the CSU in the 1970s admitted a female student bearing Bola Tinubu who was born on March 29, 1954.
Atiku Abubakar had sued to obtain Mr Tinubu’s school records under a U.S. statute that allows documents available in the U.S. to be subpoenaed for use as evidence in a foreign court.
Mr Abubakar argued that Mr Tinubu had presented contradictory claims in Nigeria and the CSU, in responding to a previous subpoena, had issued documents that contradicted what Mr Tinubu had entered under oath in Nigeria.
