By Adesina Soyooye
Yusuf Tuggar, Nigeria’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, has dismissed the controversy surrounding President Bola Tinubu’s academic records at the Chicago State University CSU as frivolous. He said it is meant to distract the President, but insisted that neither the President nor the Government is bordered.
Former Vice President and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the February 25, 2023 General Election, Atiku Abubakar, had asked the US District Court, Northern Illinois to compel the CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records to him.
In the document, Atiku argued that the document would help his suit at the Supreme Court of Nigeria. He is challenging Tinubu’s declaration as President in the Presidential election.
The US Court ordered CSU to release the President’s academic records to Atiku.
In compliance, CSU released the records to Atiku’s legal team a cache of documents connected to Tinubu’s education at the CSU as well as copies of certificates with names issued to other persons about the same time the Tinubu finished in 1979 at the school.
But reports showed that the certificate obtained by the President from the CSU was different from the one submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, before the election.
But in reaction during an interview on Channels Television, Wednesday, the Foreign Affairs Minister, said the Federal Government is not bordered.
He dismissed the allegations as just “frivolous issues” aimed at distracting Tinubu’s administration.
He said: “There is a tendency to always try to distract people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that.
“Nobody is wasting time about certificate qualification for somebody who has been a Governor of a State, served two terms, and has been on the national stage as a politician.
“You remember that (former) President Buhari had to go through the same thing, where people were actually questioning whether he went to secondary school or not. Someone who had classmates and was the captain? He was a head boy.”
