Certificate Saga: BBC Published Outcome of It’s Investigation

The disinformation team of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has disclosed that there is no evidence that President Bola Tinubu forged his Chicago State University (CSU) certificate.

The BBC, in a report titled: ‘Bola Tinubu diploma: No evidence Nigeria’s president forged college record’, revealed that their findings vindicate the Nigerian president of certificate forgery as alleged.

The 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, had accused Tinubu of forging the Chicago State University (CSU) certificate submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

However, the BBC said its conclusion after they contacted CSU with questions about Tinubu’s diplomas shows no evidence of forgery.

The BBC noted that in response to their questions, the CSU said, “We are confident and always have been in the veracity and integrity of our records regarding Tinubu’s attendance and completion of graduation requirements.”

An excerpt of the BBC findings:

The CSU released several diplomas issued between 1979 and 2003. We analysed all of them.

There are three different diplomas for Mr Tinubu that we refer to throughout our analysis:

The original one, from 1979, which he has said in the past was lost when he went into exile in the 1990s
The second one, that he submitted to Inec – supposedly a replacement diploma from CSU (it is similar to diplomas issued by CSU in the 1990s)
Additionally, CSU holds another replacement diploma for Mr Tinubu that they say is probably from the early 2000s that he never collected
The allegations on social media are based on a comparison between the document Mr Tinubu submitted to Inec and the 1979 diplomas released by CSU.

During Mr Westberg’s deposition, Mr Atiku’s lawyer focused on the copy of the diploma President Tinubu handed to the electoral commission and suggested that it was unlike any of the diplomas released by CSU.

However, while Mr Westberg agreed with Ms Liu that the diploma in question does not look like the samples from 1979, he stated that the certificate actually looks like three of the diplomas CSU released to Mr Abubakar. Our analysis confirms this.

It turns out that the discrepancy in the appearance of the diploma is down to it having been re-issued in the 1990s.

Mr Westberg said the template of CSU’s diploma has changed several times over the years. He said any request for a new diploma would resemble the current template at that time, no matter when the student graduated.

As such, if Mr Tinubu had reordered his diploma in the late 1990s, what he would have been given would look like what was obtainable then.

Three of the diplomas dating from the 1990s that CSU submitted were similar to Mr Tinubu’s.

One of them, which bears the date 18 December 1998, is identical (aside from the names, class of degree, and dates) to the diploma Mr Tinubu handed over to Inec.

Mr Westberg also stated that CSU does not keep notes of when a graduate asks for the reissuing of a diploma and therefore Mr Tinubu’s request for a copy of the diploma was not recorded.

The copy he gave to the election commission had part of the university logo missing, which Mr Westberg said in his deposition was possibly “cut off” when it was photocopied.

We analysed the diploma. It appears in fact that its bottom part was not included during the photocopy process.