A Nigerian-American media scholar and newspaper columnist, Professor Farooq Kperogi, has lent his voice to the ongoing controversy over the academic records of President Bola Tinubu, which were released by the Chicago State University (CSU) on Monday, saying Nigerians should thank former Vice President Atiku Abubakar for exposing the real identity of the President.
Kperogi, who took to his Facebook page on Tuesday to comment on the development with a piece titled, “6 Major Findings about Tinubu from the CSU Documents”, said despite the authentication of the records by CSU, President Tinubu has a lot of questions to answer about his past.
After the lengthy piece, Prof. Kperogi said: “We should all thank VP Atiku Abubakar for his doggedness, which has helped us to get this much clarity about Tinubu’s past.”
Speaking on his findings on the CSU documents, Kperogi wrote: “Both pro- and anti-Tinubu news outlets and blogs are selectively reporting the documents that Chicago State University handed over to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar yesterday. Here are 6 non-partisan tidbits I discovered from poring over them:
“1. Chicago State University’s Office of the Registrar affirmed that Bola A. Tinubu indeed attended the university “from August 1977 through June 1979” and was “awarded a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Honors on June 22, 1979.”
“The registrar also swore to this under oath. The penalty for lying under oath in America can be steep. It is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
“This information is consistent with my September 2, 2023, column titled, “Tinubu Definitely Graduated from Chicago State University.”
“2. The certificate (we call it “diploma” in the US) that Tinubu submitted to INEC is inconsistent with the certificates CSU issued in 1979 and subsequently, indicating that Tinubu forged his. (In the US, diplomas are mere ceremonial documents that most employers don’t ask for. Transcripts directly from universities are the usual ways to verify attendance and graduation.)
“Although he did legitimately graduate from Chicago State University in 1979, he obviously lost his certificate and, instead of applying for a replacement, decided to forge it.
“That strikes me as mysterious self-harm. It costs only $26 to get a replacement diploma from CSU. But it takes between eight and 10 weeks to receive it after filling out the Diploma Replacement Order Form.
“My guess is that, in the typical last-minute, fire-brigade approach to things among Nigerian elites, Tinubu didn’t plan ahead and didn’t have enough time to apply for his replacement diploma from CSU to meet INEC’s deadline and decided to visit Lagos’ infamous “Oluwole” for a counterfeit replacement.
“3. The Southwest College transcript that Tinubu used to get admitted to Chicago State University belongs to a female. I had questioned the authenticity of the transcript because of the many errors in it, such as the date and social security number. We await what CSU has to say about this.
“This reality, though, seems to validate uncorroborated but long-standing whispers from the grapevine that Tinubu, who was allegedly born Lamidi Amoda [Yoruba Muslim domestication of Abdulhamid Ahmed] Sangodele in Osun State’s Iragbiji, stole the identity of a female Bola Adekunle Tinubu to go to America.
“4. Nonetheless, this whisper may be difficult to sustain in light of the fact that Tinubu’s Chicago State University admission letter dated August 23, 1977, was addressed to “Mr. Tinubu,” not Ms. or Miss Tinubu.
“Was the “F” in the transcript from Southwest College a clerical error, especially because the social security number and the dates were also clerical errors? Or was there a cover-up somewhere?
“If he was born in 1954, it means he was 14 years old when he graduated from high school.
