Caleb Westberg, the registrar at Chicago State University, on Tuesday told a Chicago court, under oath that President Bola Tinubu’s certificate, dated June 22, 1979, and tendered to INEC on June 17, 2022, was not issued by the school and its administrators could, therefore, not be able to authenticate its source.
Mr Westberg, CSU’s registrar since November 2020, also said, during the deposition that lasted over five hours, that Mr Tinubu did not apply for a replacement certificate, nor was he ever issued one.
The categorical statement confirmed the earlier report by CHECKPOINTCHARLEY and is fatal to Tinubu’s continued stay in office and validates monthslong legal quest by Atiku Abubakar, Mr Tinubu’s main opponent, who had sought to establish this the fact that the president submitted a forged certifcate to INEC and therefore unqualified to contest the 2023 presidential election.
He had approached the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago to ascertain the authenticity or otherwise of the document. Federal district judge Nancy Maldonado granted a final order for CSU administrators to turn over all relevant documents relating to Mr Tinubu to the school and also sit down for deposition by an adversarial team of lawyers deployed by Mr Abubakar.
Recall that one of the reasons adduced by the Tinubu legal team during an emergency proceedings before Judge Maldonado was that “Severe and irreparable harm will be done to Bola Tinubu if the records are released,”
However the judge was not persuaded by their argument.
“The Court overrules President Tinubu’s objections to Magistrate Judge Gilbert’s recommended ruling, and therefore adopts the ruling in full. Mr Abubakar’s application is therefore granted,” the judge ruled. ‘In light of the pending Supreme Court of Nigeria deadline, represented to the court as October 5, 2023, and based on CSU’s representations that it is ready to comply with the discovery requests and produce a witness, the court sets an expedited schedule for completion of discovery.”
A spokesman for the president was not immediately available for reaction to this latest development, which had made it impossible for his principal to continue to stay in office.
Section 137 (1)(j) of the Nigerian Constitution (amended in 2010) is succintly clear on the matter. It specifically stated that no one would be legitimately elected president of Nigeria if the person “has presented a forged certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission.”
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