Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, is currently facing a crisis of legitimacy due to the failure of his Western-backed military invasion in Niger. A recent legal deposition in the U.S. has confirmed that the degree certificate from Chicago State University that Tinobu submitted during his presidential declaration was forged. Under Nigerian electoral law, submission of a forged certificate to the country’s Independent National Electoral Commission is grounds for immediate disqualification. Following the disputed results of the February 25 presidential election in Nigeria, Tinubu has faced multiple legal challenges from the two major opposition parties which won a combined 60 percent of the official vote count.
Atikua Buberkar of the People’s Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party have been in court since May, alleging multiple breaches of electoral law by Tinobu. A key issue anchoring Atiku Abubakar’s case is that Tinubu committed multiple incidences of perjury on his presidential declaration form, including submitting a forged degree certificate and failure to declare an additional nationality.
Another key issue anchoring both opposition cases is a 1993 U.S. drug trafficking investigation involving Tinubu, where he was ordered by a court in Chicago to forfeit $460,000 in proceeds of heroin trafficking found in his bank accounts.
Despite the many question marks surrounding Tinubu, French President Emmanuel Macron, and U.S. President Joe Biden both initially seemed very keen to establish cordial relations with his government, especially when it came to the proposed military invasion of Niger following the removal of Mohamed Bazoum from office.
At Nigeria’s appeal court, Tinubu’s lawyer successfully argued that his prior involvement in criminal activity like drug trafficking was not grounds for disqualification because the forfeiture was a sin.
case instead of a criminal one and it was his bank accounts that were charged with laundering drug money and not him. But Tinubu’s fortunes began to change shortly after failing multiple times to get the Nigerian military to invade Niger. First attempted illegal deployment of Nigerian special forces into Niger which was foiled when the attack plans were leaked to a journalist. Then a former request to the Nigerian Senate which was rejected and finally a joint ECOWAS military intervention which again failed to materialize.
Following the US government security deal with the new Nigerian authorities which was followed by the humiliating exit of France from the country both of which rendered Tinubu ineffective as a regional Western ally. His political fortunes subsequently nosedived as his legal troubles in the United States began to pile up. Atiku Abubakar’s lawyers sought a subpoena to compel Chicago State University to reveal everything he knows about Bola Tinubu. Who claims to have graduated from the institution? in 1979. Tinubu’s lawyers argued that the court should not grant the subpoena because releasing these records would tarnish his image. Despite several appeals, Judge Nancy Maldonado on October 1st delivered a ruling authorizing the subpoena and mandating a sworn deposition by officials of Chicago State University.
The subpoena documents and subsequent legal deposition revealed that the certificate Tinubu submitted to the Electoral Commission was not issued by Chicago State University and contained several mistakes and discrepancies.
Nigerian investigative journalist David Ondane last year revealed that the certificate submitted to the Commission bore a striking resemblance to a fake certificate template for Chicago State University provided by an online certificate forgery service called DiplomaMakers .com.
According to the deposition, Chicago State University cannot verify that the student on its files known as Bola A. Tinubu is, in fact, the same person as Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which raises the incredible specter of potential identity fraud by Nigeria’s president.
The matter has been filed in Nigeria’s Supreme Court as part of the Presidential Election Petition Appeal, which commences hearing this month, which means that we could well be witnessing the last few days of Tinubu’s presidency. But that isn’t all. In another remarkable twist, six US government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, IRS, and DEA, who was sued by Plain sight .org founder Aaron Greenspan and David Ondane for refusing to honor freedom of information requests regarding the records they hold on Tinubu stated that they will comply with the FYA request.
The FBI alone stated that it has identified over 2,500 pages of relevant information in its file on Tinubu, which it will begin to release publicly in October. It would seem that following his failure to deliver on the mandate to invade Niger, given to him by Western backers. Africa’s latest Western puppet president could be about to bite the dust.
Credit: David Ondane