The BBC’s Global Disinformation Team has found no proof that the diploma submitted by Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the country’s electoral commission was fake.
Claims that President Tinubu’s educational credentials were fraudulent became widely shared on social media after Chicago State University (CSU) made his academic records public last week.
We have examined some of the most popular statements that are widely spread.
The president’s academic papers are being made public because of a court case that started in August. Atiku Abubakar, one of the president’s opponents in the presidential election, filed the case.
Mr Abubakar wanted the winner to be disqualified because he said that the person faked their diploma in Business Administration from CSU in 1979, which was submitted to the electoral authority (INEC).
Mr Abubakar asked a US court in August to make CSU give him Mr. Tinubu’s school records as evidence for his case in Nigeria. This is done through a process called discovery, where both sides share information and documents before a trial.
Mr Tinubu’s lawyers didn’t want the discovery application to happen because they were worried about privacy. However, the US court decided that it should still go forward.
Mr Abubakar asked for certain papers.
You can get a copy of any diploma that was given out by CSU in 1979.
In 1979, Mr. Tinubu received a diploma from CSU.
Diploma copies that look like the one Mr. Tinubu got from CSU in 1979, with the same writing style, official stamp and signatures, and the same words on it, were given to other students too.
Jamar Orr, who worked at CSU, certified documents for CSU between 1 August 2022 and the next 12 months.
CSU provided seven diplomas for different areas of study as requested. The names of the students were removed. The university’s registrar says that the students did not pickup these diplomas.
CSU said they couldn’t find Mr. Tinubu’s diploma from 1979 because they don’t keep copies of diplomas once they have been given to students.
CSU added that, they made a new diploma for Mr. Tinubu on June 27, 1979. It also gave out diplomas to other students that looked similar to Mr Tinubu’s diplomas.
As a response to request four, CSU provided additional academic documents that were confirmed and released by Mr. Orr
Atiku Abubakar is disagreeing with Bola Tinubu’s win as president, because Atiku came in second place in the February 2023 elections.
Following the judge’s decision, Mr. Abubakar’s lawyer, Angela Liu, asked Caleb Westberg, who is currently the registrar at CSU, some questions during a legal session.
Mr Abubakar’s spokesperson, Phrank Shaibu, allowed the BBC to see and use the deposition transcript.
Some people on social media in Nigeria claim that the evidence from CSU shows that Mr. Tinubu’s diploma given to Inec was fake. Last week, one of Mr Abubakar’s lawyers, Kalu Kalu, said the same thing at a press conference.
We didn’t find any proof for this statement.
The CSU gave out a bunch of certificates from 1979 to 2003. We looked at all of them.
In our analysis, we talk about three diplomas belonging to Mr. They are different from each other.
The first version of the text, made in 1979, which he previously mentioned that he lost while living away from his home in the 1990s.
He submitted another diploma to Inec, which was supposed to be a replacement for his original diploma from CSU. This diploma resembles the ones that CSU issued in the 1990s.
Moreover, CSU has an extra diploma for Mr. Tinubu which they believe was issued in the early 2000s, but he never picked it up.
People on social media are saying that Mr. Tinubu’s document that he gave to Inec is similar to the diplomas from CSU in 1979.
During Mr Westberg’s statement, Mr Atiku’s lawyer paid attention to the diploma given by President Tinubu to the electoral commission and argued that it was different from any of the diplomas issued by CSU.
But, Mr Westberg agreed with Ms Liu that the diploma does not resemble the samples from 1979. However, he said that the certificate actually looks similar to three of the diplomas CSU gave to Mr Abubakar. Our study says the same thing.
The reason why the diploma looks different is because it was re-issued in the 1990s.
MrWestberg mentioned that the design of CSU’s diploma has been changed many times in the past. He said if a student wants a new diploma, it would look like the template at the time they request it, regardless of when they graduated.
So, if Mr Tinubu had requested a replacement for his diploma in the late 1990s, the new one would have looked like the diplomas from that time.
CSU gave out diplomas to students in 1998 and 1999. The diploma from 1998 looks exactly the same as the one Mr Tinubu gave to Inec.
CSU submitted three diplomas from the 1990s that were like Mr.
One of them, which was from 18 December 1998, is exactly the same (except for the names, degree class, and dates) as the diploma Mr. Tinubu gave to Inec.
Mr Westberg also said that CSU doesn’t keep track of when a graduate asks for a new diploma, so Mr. Tinubu’s request for a copy of the diploma wasn’t written down.
The copy he gave to the election commission was missing part of the university logo. Westberg said in his statement that it may have been “cut off” during photocopying.
We looked at the diploma. It looks like the bottom of it was not copied.
The BBC asked Mr. Tinubu’s team for a copy of his diploma. They sent the only copy of the diploma that they claimed existed. This is a black and white copy of the document that was given to Inec.
Another organization in Nigeria that checks facts claimed that Mr. Tinubu’s diploma was not from CSU because CSU’s diplomas do not say “with honors” under the degree title.
But the BBC discovered that although this was not shown in the other diplomas published by CSU, it does exist in Mr Tinubu’s diploma given in the early 2000s, which was confirmed by Mr Westberg during his statement.
The text means that the words “with honors” on the diploma match the information submitted by the president to INEC.
Mr Tinubu’s diploma, which was requested again in the 1990s, is still with CSU because he did not pick it up.
Mr Westberg said that the school could confirm that this specific diploma is real because the school still has it since nobody has come to get it.
Not all students finish university with honours. Tinubu completed his studies at CSU and received high marks, according to court documents reviewed by the BBC.
The BBC asked CSU about its diplomas and CSU directed us to a statement that said they are confident that Tinubu met all the requirements for attending and graduating from CSU.
There is a claim on social media that someone named Bola A Tinubu, who went to CSU, is actually a woman.
Daley College) in Chicago, where he studied Accounting. Daley College is where I went to school first before I moved to CSU in 1976. In the Southwest transcript, it shows that a person who is identified as female attended the school. This has made people say that the person named Mr. Tinubu took the identity of that woman. Atiku’s lawyer, Mr. Kalu, mentioned this during a press conference last week.
However, Westberg made it clear during his statement that there was no doubt that the person who went to CSU was a man named Bola A Tinubu. He said the university used additional things besides the name to make sure the student was who they said they were.
He said that the Social Security Number (SSN) in the transcript from Southwest College is the same as in other documents where the student’s gender is clearly noted as male.
But the documents that were made public made people wonder about Mr. Tinubu’s real birth date and which secondary school he went to.
According to one document, Mr Tinubu went to Government College Lagos in 1970. However, the school website says that it was started in 1974.
Other than the difference in gender, the birth dates mentioned in some of the released documents don’t match President Tinubu’s official birth date, which is 29 March 1952.
The document from CSU shows that he was born on 29 March 1954. The form he used to apply for college asks for his birthday, and he wrote down March 29, 1955.
During Westberg’s questioning, Mr. Atiku’s lawyer stated that Mr. Tinubu had provided his birth date as March 29, 1952 on the forms submitted to Inec.
During questioning, Mr. Westberg said that the differences might have happened because someone made a mistake.
We reached out to Mr. Tinubu’s team to ask about these differences, but instead of giving us a response, a spokesperson told us to contact his political party, the All Progressives Congress. We spoke to Festus Keyamo, who is both Mr. Tinubu’s spokesperson for his campaign and a minister in the government. He ignored our calls and messages.- BBC