Eko Hot Blog reports that Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, has played down the issues surrounding the certificate of President Bola Tinubu.
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Tuggar said the Tinubu administration will not be dancing to the tune of the allegations levelled against the president, thereby describing the issue as a “trivial matter” and mere tool of distraction.
The Minister, on a television programme aired on Wednesday, said the President, despite the controversy, had met with other world leaders and the issue had not been a subject of discussion in all his recent international engagements.
“The foreign leaders that we’ve been engaging and the international organisations clearly are disinterested in wasting time on such. We pay no mind to that,” Tuggar said.
In addition to his speech, he said that it was no longer a surprise that the issue had been a subject of discussion in the Nigeria space, while making a reference to the erstwhile President, Muhammadu Buhari, who encountered similar allegation during his tenure.
“There is a tendency to always try to distract and detain people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that.
“Nobody is wasting time about certificate qualification for somebody who has been a governor of a state, served two terms, and has been on the national stage as a politician.
“You remember that (former) President Buhari had to go through the same thing, where people were actually questioning whether he went to secondary school or not. Someone who had classmates, was the captain; and was a head boy,” Tuggar said.
He thereby admonished Nigerians to concentrate on development rather than wasting time on a trivial matter.
Considering “the economic challenges we are facing – we shouldn’t be wasting time about whether some certificate, whether there is a T missing or an I hasn’t been dotted. That shouldn’t be our primary focus at the moment,” he said.
This is coming after the release of the president’s academic result by the Chicago State University (CSU) as requested by the former vice president and candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Abubakar Atiku in the February 25, 2023 presidential election.
The U.S. court presided over by Magistrate Jeffrey Gilbert, on September 19 granted Atiku’s request for the release of Tinubu’s academic records but the President filed a review of the order.
However, the president’s attorneys insisted that the documents would be of no relevance in Atiku’s appeal against the Tribunal verdict at the Supreme Court
On the contrary, Justice Nancy Maldonado, a federal judge, overruled Tinubu’s objections and ordered the CSU to release the President’s academic records.
In the CSU documents, which went viral late Monday night, the institution responded to Atiku’s four requests.
In the response were as follows: “A true and correct copy of any diploma for a Bachelor of Science degree issued by CSU in 1979,” the US varsity said, “The documents responsive to this request which CSU, after diligent search, has been able to locate are produced herewith and Bates labelled CSU 0001 through CSU 0007. The students’ names on these diplomas have been redacted for privacy reasons.”
On the second request for “A true and correct copy of any diploma issued by CSU in 1979 to Tinubu”, the varsity said, “CSU does not, in the ordinary course, keep copies of student diplomas, and after the diligent search cannot locate a copy of the original diploma it prepared for Mr Tinubu in 1979, hence, has no documents responsive to this request.”
The third request was seeking the release of true and correct copies of the diplomas issued by CSU other than (Tinubu) contained in the same font, seal, signatures and wording, the CSU said, “The documents responsive to this request which CSU, after diligent search, has been able to locate are produced herewith and Bates labelled CSU 0008 through CSU 0010.
‘’The students’ names on these diplomas have been redacted for privacy reasons. The CSU is also producing Bates labelled as CSU 0011 and CSU 0012, diplomas prepared for other CSU students (with their names redacted for privacy) which match the format of the Tinubu’s replacement diploma dated June 27, 1997.”
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Also, while responding to Atiku’s fourth request for “true and correct copies of any CSU documents relating to Tinubu’s that were certified by Jamar C. Orr, Esq, including with limitation, the documents in Exhibit D to the Uwais Declaration, and all communications to or from CSU concerning the certification of such documents by Jamar C. Orr, Esq, during the period August 1, 2022, to August 1, 2023’’, the CSU said, “The respondents’ documents certified by Mr. Orr are produced herewith and Bates labelled CSU 0013 through CSU 0032, CSU’s prior objection to the communication aspect of this request was sustained by the Court (see Doc. 40 at pp, 28-29 and Doc. 54 at p, 32), hence no documents responsive to that subject are being produced.”
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