WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER
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Last week, the Chicago State University, CSU, released the academic records of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to Atiku Abubakar and his team which was made available to the public. After I diligently perused the documents, I came to a conclusion which I believe every other literate person would subscribe to same. But unfortunately, it has come around to be that I was wrong in assuming that we are all reasonable and neutral in analysing and interpreting the released documents. While the school in very plain English and under oath, stated categorically that the same Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is currently the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria applied to, was admitted and graduated from the school, Atiku and his legion in the opposition, unbelievably chose to ignore this statement and other facts from the documents and have remained fixated on the falsehoods they want to believe and propagate.
Unfortunately, it appears I was completely wrong. A section of Nigerians, mostly of the Obidient and the Atikulated folds, and of course all the sworn enemies of the All Progressives Congress, and the President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu have decided what they want to believe, regardless of the reality of the expositions from the released documents and the school registrar’s deposition. Then I remembered, we have been here before. It was the same people who chose to conclude that the then President Muhammadu Buhari was replaced by a clone, and they even nicknamed him Jubril of Sudan. It is not a function of education or enlightenment, it is a sheer group psychological disorder whereby a group desires and goes to an extraordinary effort to attempt to transform a lie to their own version of the truth, while ignoring the real truth.
So, as I put down this piece for the week, I have no intention of convincing the lie-fixated population to abandon the lies they have chosen to fervently believe, neither do I expect to see them believing the real truth; but I write for the sake of the sane minded Nigerians who have been led ignorantly to believe their lies, and for posterity sake. To contribute to the attempts to redeem the name and image of the country from their fixation on the lies they tell and its global consequences on our commonwealth.
A day after, the registrar of CSU, in a deposition made under oath, addressed every other question of Atiku Abubakar’s petition. On whether the certificate the President presented to INEC was authentic and from the school, and the submission of the registrar clearly reveals there is a difference between the two requirements; on authenticity, the registrar said yes, Tinubu submitted the result and the content represents his result from CSU. On the question of if the particular result is from CSU, he said no and offered an explanation which immediately freed the president of committing any crime. In the words of the registrar, in the event of loss or misplacement of certificates received from the school, a graduate of the school can no longer return to the school for a replacement certificate but can legally contract a third-party accredited vendor for a replacement certificate, that is, permitted to do so under the US laws. Of course, this will imply that the original content of the certificate is not altered.
Atiku Abubakar and team are literate enough to understand the English expressions in the documents and their meanings but would refuse to accept it for reasons best known to them. And we will have a bigger problem at hand as a nation because we have a legion of one directional mob who will believe anything once it comes from their lord(s). In their innate irrationality, they began with the narrative of a female ownership of the certificate in the President’s possession and then suddenly transformed to: the certificate belongs to a black American because as at the time of filling his admission application, the closest alternative in the block for him to tick was black American.
Yet, the same people cannot discuss the fact that the same Tinubu, the present President, who is a male was admitted, went through the school, participated in the school politics, and graduated with honours from the school. They cannot explain away his presence in the school albums, yet they would amplify the lies that he impersonated another. Where is the rationality in partially agreeing that he went to the school but ended up impersonating another student? Ordinarily, it would not make sense but when the actors involved are the Atikulated and the Obidient elements, it becomes understandable that we are dealing with a mix of populations that are literally built to accept and believe only the lies that they want to hear. Why would someone spend a full term in a university with full and excellent participation and then choose to use the certificate of another student? Who did this to us this?
We have a serious national challenge, coming from the fact that we are not ready to learn and adjust to reality as long as our fixations satisfy our biases. We are almost at the same point we were some eight years ago, when we chose to believe that the then sitting president was a clone, and regardless of our education and status, believe the lie that it was a “Jubril from Sudan” that was in Aso Rock. It is pathetic, and seriously disturbing that even after the Registrar of the university (CSU), in a deposition, submitted that Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the same person currently occupying the office of the President of Nigeria attended and graduated from the school, we will still have learned men making unscrupulous attempts to interpret the deposition – apparently to blend with the propaganda they want to preach to their followers. The registrar deposes the legal right of graduated students to obtain replacement certificates from an accredited third party vendors; yet, the existence of a verified certificate that did not come from the school becomes an issue with people who are learned enough to know.
Atiku Abubakar apparently came back to Nigeria to become a “hero”. To him, he has unveiled a huge secret that would damage the President and would be deserving of an award for his “heroic odyssey” to CSU in the United States of America. But in reality, what Atiku Abubakar has succeeded in doing is bringing the country to the mud. He has succeeded in further deepening the gulf of division among Nigerians, along fixations on political and related sensitive affiliations.
However, Atiku Abubakar should not be blamed for whatever is happening now, rather than our system that allows his likes to get away with atrocities against the country again and again until they are absolutely sure they will get away with anything. Otherwise, shouldn’t Atiku Abubakar be cooling off somewhere in some prison; I remember vividly the same Atiku Abubakar swearing under an oath after the 2019 election that he accessed the INEC server without authorisation. A treasonable offence against the nation and punishable by death, yet, he was again on the ballot in 2023. If we have a functioning system, where aberrations against the law attract corresponding consequences without regard for personalities, would Atiku Abubakar have the freedom and audacity to take the whole nation on his disturbing voyage.
Why not in USA? Why can’t Atiku call his press conference where the forgery he claims was committed? He wouldn’t because he knows the school wouldn’t take the lies he constructed and he definitely wouldn’t get away with it; but, we have a loose system here, and anything goes.
It would be tantamount to setting a bad precedent going into the future for Nigeria and every Nigerian, if Atiku Abubakar and his propaganda machinery are allowed to get away this time around with the lies they fabricated around the President’s certificate and the defamation they committed against his person. The President, in my opinion, would have to sue Atiku Abubakar, both here in Nigeria and in the United States, for him to prove with incontrovertible evidence, his self interpretation of the documents and the registrar’s deposition.
APC as a party, also has a share of the blame, mostly for the free rein of the opposition all along since the terms of the immediate past president. And for as long as the party fails to get its acts together and unite its units and factions to stand the ground to defend the integrity of the party and its elected leaders, the opposition would continue to make a caricature of the party’s leadership and the government. Four eight years, former president Muhammadu Buhari was destroyed on social media without commensurate response from the party; and now, the cycle is repeating itself. For all the right reasons, it is time APC set up a framework to counter these instruments of unbridled attacks from the opposition, and at best, serve them the same soup and better flavours as well.
To conclude this piece, I wish to ask a pertinent question; what is it that Atiku Abubakar wishes to gain from his long goose chase to CSU? Except for the Obidients and the Atikulated, every other Nigerian, and funny enough, Atiku Abubakar himself, knew all along that President Tinubu went to and graduated from CSU. So, what did he want? Did he go after the information to sway the Supreme Court judgement in his favour? No, he knows all along that everything he spreads on the street are jargons in law and legality as it is most likely the new materials he wants to smuggle into his pending prayers at the Supreme Court, that is, that Tinubu’s record from CSU is not the same as what was submitted to INEC, will be roundly thrown out as a pre-election matter. And it is doubtful if the evidence from an inferior court, a magistrate court, in a foreign country, would be admissible by the Nigerian Supreme Court without passing through the US equivalent of high and higher courts. Under the provisions of the Electoral Act, there are no provisions for the introduction of fresh evidence on appeal. In a regular civil appeal, you can introduce fresh evidence but before you’re allowed to do so, you must show that the evidence you’re trying to introduce was otherwise not available at the time the lawsuit was instituted. The President submitted his diploma to INEC in June 2022; elections were held in February 2023. He filed his petition in March 2023. He slept over such avenue and failed to approach the School or the US District Court until August 2023. Even if it were a regular civil matter, what do you think would have been the attitude of the court?
Let us not forget that Atiku and his team brought up these pre-election matters after the February 25th Presidential election. He already knows that there is nothing for him in the Supreme Court, so why? Atiku, as much as Peter Obi, wants to stay relevant on the street in preparation for 2027.
The regular customer is already strategising for the next election, yet, at the expense of the integrity and sanity of the country. What we are seeing now is a pre-election strategy of the order of the ENDSAR of 2022.
Someone wrote “Atiku Abubakar WAEC Certificate Read *Sadiq Abubakar* But Bola Ahmed Tinubu Certificate Must Be Questioned By Atiku And His Atikulated Riotous Supporters And The Headless Mobs Of Obedient Servants.” What a Man!
And I must submit that this whole episode is a sheer national disgrace.
GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC IF NIGERIA!
