Mr Tunde Rahman, Senior Special Assistant on Media Matters to President Bola Tinubu, speaks with SATURDAY TRIBUNE on the controversy surrounding the president’s degree certificate which he presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for the 2023 election.
What are your views on the Chicago State University certificate controversy? The Atiku side is insisting that the president forged the certificate he submitted to INEC. What really happened?
There is no matter of forgery in this case. President Bola Tinubu enrolled, attended and graduated from Chicago State University. The registrar of the university, Mr Caleb Westberg, made that point very clear during his deposition at the office of Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s lawyer in Chicago. He said President Tinubu attended and graduated from the institution. Let me add that for every year he was in the university, President Tinubu was on the VC’s honours list. He graduated sumna cum laude, with distinction. So, he could not have forged the certificate he earned?
Don’t forget that certificates or diplomas, as they are called in the United States, are not the critical thing; it is transcripts. Printing of certificates is even in most cases outsourced to third-party vendors. If you attended a university, you can choose to pick or not pick up your certificate because what employers will ask for are transcripts. When Atiku’s lawyer asked Mr Westberg to confirm the certificate he presented to him as the one President Tinubu allegedly submitted to INEC, he said he could not as only the president had the certificate which he applied for and was picked up for him; that the school doesn’t keep certificates. What they retain are transcripts. They don’t retain certificates.
The opposition is calling on the president to resign. Is the president not worried about these events? Have they not distracted him?
How can the president be worried? Mr President is unperturbed. He is unfazed by all of that. He knows what is driving former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. It is what I call post-election loss trauma.
What impact will this controversy have on governance?
That is the point. As journalists and editors, we must be wary of the antics of the opposition. The election has come and gone. A winner has emerged. The president is Asiwaju Tinubu. The defeated PDP presidential candidate, former Vice President Atiku, did not accept defeat. He filed a petition at the Court of Appeal, which is the election tribunal in this case. He lost. He has appealed the judgment and his appeal is before the Supreme Court. Why take the case to the streets and overseas again, undermining our sovereignty, denigrating the country and unnecessarily heating up the polity?
Atiku and the president were known to be friends, should we assume that the steps taken by Atiku on the certificate has finally ruined their friendship?
I don’t know. If Atiku is truly President Tinubu’s friend and his friend defeated him in an election, shouldn’t he have accepted defeat and moved on? But he is a sore loser. I put this down to peer envy. If you listened to or watched Atiku’s press conference on Thursday in Abuja, you would have noticed it was dripping with sheer envy. He said President Tinubu stabbed him; that the president supported the late (Umaru) Yar’Adua in the 2007 presidential election.
What message has the president for Nigerians on this matter?
I think the message will be that they remain steadfast with the government; that they remain law-abiding. The present time may be a challenging time but the pain being endured as a result of the reforms the government embarked upon will be a temporary one. In his last broadcast, the president said he understood our situation and that things would soon improve. I believe him. He likened it to the pangs of childbirth. The pains will come. But once the baby is born, the pain disappears and the joy of the mother is the baby that is born. There will be light at the end of this tunnel.
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