PRESS STATEMENT
“We believe Bola Tinubu who attended CSU is the same person who is the President of Nigeria today”
These were the words of the Registrar of Chicago State University, CSU, Caleb Walesberg to a body of Lawyers representing various parties in the case instituted by Alhajj Atiku over the certificate of President Bola Tinubu as part of the process fulfilling the orders of Judge Nancy Maldorado.
He further averred that there are three similar certificates to the one issued to President Tinubu on June 22, 1979, a copy of which was submitted to Independent National Elections Commission, INEC as part qualification requirements to contest for the Presidency in the last general election.
“The Copy of CSU Certificate issued by the Order of the Court is different from what Tinubu submitted to INEC” – Alhajji Abubakar Atiku Camp
To decipher a sane summation is however, lost in the labyrinths of other latitudes of disclosures that the Bola Tinubu who graduated from CSU was a female, irregularities in dates of birth et. nauseum.
The cacophonies of public interpretations have created a near public hysteria, making it difficult to reach conclusions without subjective colorations.
It is rather difficult not to draw the conclusion that the whole essence of Alhajj Atiku circuit train on the CSU certificate is to cause pervasive confusion in the polity and nothing more.
Knowledgeable legal experts have shown that the outcome of the United States’ Court Order for California State University to release President Tinubu academic records to Alhaj Abubakar Atiku can have no bearings on the outcome of disputations of the last Presidential elections since it was neither pleaded nor reflected in the verdict of the Presidential Elections Petition Tribunal. Thus, it is of no effect whatsoever on the case at the Supreme Court.
We are seriously apprehensive of the real, dangerous, and sinister motives of this escapades. Alhajj Abubakar Atiku, the Presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) is fast becoming a Guinness World Record Holder as a Serial Loser in Nigerian political landscape.
Without reckoning past forlorn defeats of the former Vice President, who woefully failed to succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo, losing to highly regarded Late, President Umar Yar’Adua, Atiku no doubt, gallantly lost out in the Presidential elections of February 2023. His petition at the Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal, PEPT was seemingly thrown out through the roof.
He has announced resolve to challenge the verdict at the Supreme Court. Yet, he has been gallivanting round Chicago State University in search of a straw to bring down the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
We clearly read this as subsect of a grand scheme to ferment chaos in our fragile polity by hyping monumental public confusion and inevitably derail our nascent, budding democratic institutions. Nigerians must be fully awake to the antics of this malevolent plots.
As veritable civic trenches stakeholders, we are deeply concerned that desperate political activities may instigate confussionist mass hysteria capable of inadvertently drawing the nation into devastating political imbroglio.
We walk on thread of common-sense logic on this matter. We are certain that it would be difficult, if not impossible for an impostor, uncertificated person to get employed by a multi-national corporation like Mobil and excel in its services with Twenty years distinguished management career.
These types of firms usually headhunt for management cadres’ staff which was the status of President Bola Tinubu whilst in the employment of Mobil.
Equally, President Tinubu sterling performance in the Senate of the Federal Republic and as democratically elected Governor of Lagos State, the Center of Excellence speaks volumes of testament to his eminently trained, cerebral credentials.
More importantly, President Tinubu has demonstrated abundant, rare statesmanship, humanism that endeared him into the hearts of teeming majority of Nigerian across social spectrum which gave him victory at the last Presidential.
This is what any person really needs to aspire to become custodian of the public trust of citizens and society, not a shit of paper called professorial certificates!
It is highly disingenuous for a person to seek smuggling himself on the mantle of leadership with extraneous factors, having glaringly lost in the political, constitutional, and legitimate process of getting the peoples’ mandate a cesspool pit which Alhajji Atiku has descended low into.
It smacks of desperation, self-serving avarice for power by all tricks necessary. Not the hallmark of altruistic statesmen.
We are even more perplexed that the PDP Presidential candidate is attempting to give what he never had and can never have. Atiku never had the intellectual stamina for tertiary institution’s academic rigors.
He is without a clear-cut ordinary level certification before joining the Custom Services, from where he rose to Officer cadet as a protégé of powerful cabal. His service in the Custom is without any worthy, national meritorious credentials.
From there, he joined politics riding on the crest of late Musa Yar’Adua, People’s Democratic Movement to become fortuitous Vice President to former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
His former Principal, Chief Obasanjo has no good recommendations to give about his Deputy. Even if we strive to wave aside the allegations of betrayal by Obasanjo, it is a common, public knowledge that as Vice President in charge of the Bureau of Public Enterprises, BPE, he supervised a historic, global record of unwholesome cannibalization and doling out of Nigerian citizens’ collective patrimony to himself, personal cronies, and associates through a fraudulent privatization adventure.
Let us not hurry to forget that Alhajj Atiku has numerous cases of economic sabotage to answer while presiding over the affairs of BPE. In a structured democratic, constitutional society, Atiku would have been diligently investigated, prosecuted, convicted and indicted for his economic crimes against the people and nation.
It should be emphasized in our public plates that it is not yet social justice on Alhajji Abubakar Atiku’s indictment in $1.1Billion Siemens Bribery Scam.
A crime which the company has been duly indicted and fined for in its mother country. One of the wives of Alhajj Atiku, Jennifer Douglas-Abubakar Atiku was found culpable of illicit financial transactions and money laundering in the United States of America.
She served as a purveying front for Atiku slush funds. She was indicted for $40Million money laundering including $17 bribe from Siemens, indicted along with other shell companies of the former Vice President – LetsGo Ltd. Inc., Guernsey Trust Company Nigeria Limited and Sima Holdings Ltd.
Atiku political treachery may have been more visible with the President Obasanjo regime who accused him of been a kleptomaniac and an incorrigible traitor.
The most unpardonable however, is the citing of his luxurious, business empire in the Middle East where he warehoused his allegedly looted public funds.
Many keen political watchers were miffed with his relocation to Saudi Arabia immediately after losing the 2015 Presidential race only to resurface to pick up the PDP Presidential ticket despite general agitations for fairness and equity that the ticket must come from Southern Zone instead of North where he hails from.
Having lost the last Presidential race, we smell a rat in his newfound pet project to bring down the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by all crooked means in the book.
He is playing the same scripts the powerful cabal that have held the nation by the jocular have been churning out since beginning of the last Democratic Transition Programme, from the Naira Re Designing exercise to clamor for cancellation of last Presidential polls, demand for Interim Government and outright invitation for military take over. We stand tooth and nail with Constitutional Peoples’ Democracy in Nigeria.
We call on the people, well-meaning Nigerians, and the international community to be wary of this yet another ploy to snatch power by inordinate, ambitious politicians.
The game plan is to stigmatize President Tinubu, bring the administration to disrepute, mis-direct public outcry enough to snatch power through back-room conspiracy by means contrary to the nation’s constitutional grundnorms. This shall be an ill wind that shall blow no one, no good.
FORWARD TO GREATER NIGERIA
LONG LIVE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE
E-Signed :
Razaq Olokoba
Centre for Dignity in Governance
07055195506
Ahmed Balogun
Front Line Socio-Economic Research Centre
07060952805
COALITION OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS ;-
Network Alliance for Global Challenge
Good Governance for the masses
Centre for Human Rights Advocacy
Lawyers Without Borders, Abuja
Youth Initiative Agenda for Democratic Process
WorkBond International Network, WIN
Southwest People Parliamentary Agenda
Yoruba Youth Assembly
Peace Initiative For Better Nigeria
Boarders People’s Rights Agenda
Youth League Academy
