I didn’t attend primary, secondary schools; my university certificates stolen by unknown soldiers, Tinubu tells INEC

The All Progressives Congress’s presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, has informed INEC that he did not attend elementary or secondary school.

The former governor of Lagos, however, asserted that he held two degrees from American universities, which, according to him, had been taken during the military junta of the 1990s by unidentified soldiers.

The information was revealed in an affidavit that Mr. Tinubu provided to the electoral office as part of his eligibility paperwork for the 2023 presidential elections.

According to the documents made public on Friday, Mr. Tinubu did not fill out the columns for his primary and secondary education. However, he claimed to have graduated with a degree in business and administration in 1979, seemingly referring to his earlier assertions that he had attended Chicago State University.

“From October 1994 to October 1998, I went into self-exile. When I came back, I found that unidentified people had looted all of my possessions, including all of the documents pertaining to my credentials and my certificates in regard to paragraph three above.

“Since the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria was forced to adjourn after the military overthrew the government on November 17, 1993, my house has been the subject of numerous searches by different security agents.

“I presided over the Senate’s appropriations, banking, and finance committee. In 1993, I participated as a plaintiff in one of the two lawsuits brought against the temporary national government.

In his claim to ine, Mr. Tinubu stated, “I went on exile when it became clear that my life was in danger.”

The electoral law requires candidates to submit their personal information, which will be made public and available for review before elections.

Particularly in 1999 and 2003, when he ran for office as a candidate for governor of Lagos, Mr. Tinubu’s most recent assertions appear to be at odds with his earlier election statements. Both times, he stated that he had attended elementary and high school.

He claimed he attended St. Paul Children’s Home School in Ibadan from 1958 to 1964 and Government College in Ibadan from 1965 to 1968 for his secondary education.

Mr. Tinubu claimed that he left Ibadan and attended Richard Daley College in Chicago from 1969 to 1971.

Finally, he claimed to have gone to the University of Chicago as well as Chicago State University.

Mr. Tinubu was confirmed as a student at Chicago State University, where he earned a business and administration degree on June 22, 1979.

However, a well-known Nigerian attorney named Gani Fawehinmi contested all of the submissions, calling them all fraudulent.

Mr. Fawehinmi, who was born in 1938 and died in 2009, took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which dismissed it on technical grounds rather than the merits.

A political activist in Abuja named Ikenga Ugochinyere said he would challenge Mr. Tinubu’s court documents and charge him with perjury.

According to a statement from Mr. Ugochinyere, Mr. Tinubu “commits perjury as he abandons his earlier claim of attending primary school, sworn in an affidavit to run for governor but now claims not to have attended primary school.” His “new forms conflict with his 2007 affidavit that he has completed both primary and secondary education.”

When contacted for comment regarding the alleged inconsistencies in his submissions to the electoral commission, Mr. Tinubu’s spokesperson did not respond.