Yusuf Tuggar, the minister of foreign affairs, has said the recent controversy surrounding President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s academic records from Chicago State University (CSU) are distractions.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, Tuggar said that the scandal had no bearing on any of the president’s most recent international engagements.
“There is a tendency to always try to distract and detain people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that,” he said.
“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,” he added.
News About Nigeria reports that his remarks come as Caleb Westberg, the registrar of Chicago State University, testified under oath that the replacement certificate President Bola Tinubu provided to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is a fabrication and not a record of the university.
President Tinubu’s certificate, dated June 22, 1979, and submitted to INEC on June 17, 2022, was not issued by Chicago State University, according to Westberg, who joined the school in November 2020 from Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana. As a result, the school’s administrators were unable to verify the certificate’s source.
President Tinubu neither requested nor received a new certificate, according to Westberg’s testimony during the deposition.
The controversies surrounding Tinubu’s certificate come as Peter Obi and Atiku approach the Supreme Court as they seek to overturn the verdict of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal that upheld the election of President Bola Tinubu.
