Caleb Westberg, the Chicago State University (CSU) Registrar, after categorically saying that the diploma President Bola Tinubu submitted to Nigeria’s electoral commission, INEC, was not issued by the US school in his deposition on Tuesday before an Illinois court, said it is not unusual for companies to generate fake academic certificates for willing buyers on the Internet.
Mr Westberg stated under oath while being questioned by Atiku Abubakar’s lawyers that the CSU had no knowledge of the document Mr Tinubu had submitted to INEC in June 2022 as part of the mandatory requirements for presidential candidates.
Instead, he opined 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 asked 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. Westberg made the deposition following the ruling of Judge Nancy Maldonado, who had ordered CSU to turn over relevant academic records of President Tinubu on Monday and also make their officials available for deposition on Tuesday.
As at the time of filing this report, the presidency had yet to specifically respond to the statement under oath by the CSU official that the certificate Tinubu submitted to INEC was forged.
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