The fact that the record of Tinubu is to be unsealed in a Chicago court as he is in the U.S. attending the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) is a failure of Nigerian legal system. His record unsealing in Chicago indicts domestic legal system.
Barely two weeks after the Presidential election court gave a judgment that glossed over the myriads of vexing questions dogging the dubious identity and qualifications of Senator Bola Tinubu, all eyes are now on the judiciary in America which ordered the release of his school records within 48 hours.
Senator Tinubu sets the unenviable record of being the first Nigerian (or possibly only world ruler) whose identity was under litigation in the very country he was visiting on official state function.
He has no footprint of existence anywhere before his sojourn at the Chicago Southwest Community College. He has no secondary school, and no primary school (after the ones he first claimed were found to be fake) and just mysteriously originated in a community college in Chicago. Now, what is even more interesting is that his first certificate identifies him as female. In other words, the Bola A. Tinubu certificate in the gender column identifies him as female.
The second thing about this fellow is that the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) wrote to the U.S. Embassy to investigate him and to confirm whether he truly attended Chicago State University. The United States Embassy replied, in a letter signed by the FBI legal attache at the embassy, saying that they investigated and Chicago State University had “no record” of him. This is after he initially lied that he attended the more prestigious University of Chicago then said it was Chicago State University.
So the only document that we know is credible and true about this man is a U.S. court judgment where he forfeited half a million dollars to the United States on account of drug money laundering.
A U.S. court has just ordered CSU to provide some of the records this week. If this man stole the identity of somebody, the danger of granting sovereign immunity to an individual who has been known to be associated with drug money laundering is that he can fly into the United States of America with a presidential jet, and nobody can go on that plane and search it.
The United States cannot, nor can Nigeria afford to have somebody with such a questionable antecedent to be president of the USA’s largest trade partner in Africa and one of its biggest security partners on the continent.
Tinubu’s profile is:
- Name – False (claimed and disproven)
- Parentage – False (claimed and disproven)
- Primary school – Fake (claimed and disclaimed)
- Secondary school – Fake (claimed and disclaimed)
- Community college – doubtful
- University (University of Chicago) – False (claimed and disproven)
- University (Chicago State University) – doubtful (claimed certificate proven fake)
- US District Court Money Laundering forfeiture – True
- National Youth Service – Doubtful (claimed and disclaimed)
Sadly, the failure of Nigeria’s legal system to deal adequately with these troubling recurring concerns over the years has invited the ignominious public spectacle that while Senator Tinubu is at the world’s UN center stage, a Chicago court is digging into his antecedents.
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Ironically Tinubu went to India when the Nigerian court ruled on his election and was in the U.S. when the Chicago court ruled on his records.
It is noteworthy that the U.S. Court did not use technicalities to frustrate the case of the Applicant Abubakar Atiku. The court said Tinubu “contends that the discovery Applicant seeks is not relevant to the Nigerian Proceedings because issues regarding his educational background were not referenced specifically in Applicant’s Petition filed with the Court of Appeal. See Intervenor’s Response [ECF No. 21], at 5-6 (citing [ECF No. 5-2]). Those matters instead were raised in Applicant’s reply materials filed in support of the Petition. As addressed further below, the Nigerian Court of Appeal declined to consider issues related to Intervenor’s educational background that had not been included in Applicant’s Petition but rather were belatedly raised for the first time in Applicant’s (Page 9 Case: 1:23-cv-05099). See September 6, 2023 Judgment in the Presidential Election Petition Court (“Nigerian Court of Appeal Decision”) [ECF No. 34], at 545-558, 606, 608-09.3