Tinubu’s certificate forgery trivial; Nigerians should condemn Atiku for humiliating his friend, benefactor: Presidency

Temitope Ajayi, senior special assistant to President Bola Tinubu on media, says the question of whether or not the Nigerian leader graduated from Chicago State University in the U.S. is irrelevant and cannot compare to the humiliation his principal has suffered due to the controversy.

For approaching a foreign court for an order directing discovery of Mr Tinubu’s CSU records in faraway America, the presidential aide said Atiku Abubakar demonstrated a behaviour synonymous with biting the hands that once fed him all in his pursuit of “earthly position.”

“For me, the issue is not whether President Tinubu graduated from Chicago State University or not,” Mr Ajayi wrote on X Tuesday evening. “It is the fact that former Vice President Atiku is not a decent man.”

“Nobody should subject his or her friend to the level of assault and indignity he has subjected President Tinubu to because of earthly position and contestation for power,” Mr Ajayi added.

The presidential aide recounted instances where Mr Tinubu reportedly “moved mountains for Atiku in the past” and sheltered him when” he was thoroughly beaten by rain and stripped naked by President Olusegun Obasanjo and his party PDP in 2007.”

Olusegun Obasanjo was Nigeria’s president between 1999 and 2006, and Mr Abubakar served as his vice. But both men later fell after Mr Obasanjo claimed Mr Abubakar was disloyal.

“No friend should become what Ekiti people call ‘aleni mo deyin’, a relentless pursuer like former VP Atiku regardless of the prize!” Mr Ajayi wrote in his angry tirade against the PDP presidential candidate.

Mr Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate, came second with 6.9 million votes in the February 25 elections that produced Mr Tinubu as winner.

The former vice president had fiercely challenged the outcome of the presidential polls at the elections petitions tribunal, where his petitions were dismissed last month.

But in his determination to nullify Mr Tinubu’s election victory, Mr Abubakar approached the U.S. Court for the Northern District of Illinois for an order mandating CSU to provide him with the president’s educational records citing section 1782 of a U.S. law which allows it turn over relevant documents for use in a foreign proceeding.

Judge Nancy Maldonado on Saturday overruled Mr Tinubu’s objections and ordered that CSU hand over the sought records to Mr Abubakar and have the corporate staff make a deposition authenticating the records