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OPINION: The Certificate Elephant In Abuja
Published
2 years agoon
By
Editor
By Lasisi Olagunju
The Charleston Gazette was an American newspaper that was born in 1907 but stopped bearing that name in 2015. One of the newspaper’s 1952 editions contained a piece with a clause that may have been written for Tinubu’s Nigeria: “Chicago, that’s an old Indian word meaning ‘get that elephant out of your room’.” Someone said coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. I would say that this ‘Chicago’ sentence perfectly fits into Nigeria’s current basket of trouble. There is no way you’ll be a user of the English language and you won’t have come across ‘an elephant in the room.’ The first time you heard or read it, you probably wondered how the elephant got into the room in the first place. My English teachers and my dictionary told me that ‘an elephant in the room’ points at a major problem or a solution or a matter, knotty and controversial; manifest and obvious to everyone but is deliberately ignored or avoided for discussion by everyone because it is a taboo or a potential source of trouble or sorrow or embarrassment.
The biggest questions among President Bola Tinubu’s family and friends should be: Why again? And who was the enemy within who procured the contentious “replacement certificate” for him? Those questions are very big, like an elephant, the biggest land animal the world has yet seen. Yet, it is possible for it to be present and remain unseen, particularly if the world is scared of the consequences of seeing it. It is ‘see no evil, hear no evil’ around the president. That is the definition of loyalty in imperial palaces. No one around Abuja is asking the right questions; no one in Abuja is offering the right answers because nobody wants to be quoted as saying the wrong things and losing influence in the royal court. No one is telling the president the truth that this Chicago certificate problem is a real problem. They are clapping for the naked king and abusing the critical bard. Why would a supposedly wise man fall twice at the same spot? The first time was when he contested and won the governorship of Lagos State, and now this – right in the centre of the world market.
Tinubu spoke with so much confidence at Chatham House on December 5, 2022. He mocked his critics as he announced that he had collected a replacement copy of his degree certificate from the Chicago State University. An applause followed that announcement. But that university last Monday said on oath that Tinubu did not collect his degree certificate from the institution. So, where and how did our president get what he announced in London? After his technical escape from Gani Fawehinmi in 1999/2000, he was not expected to play games with certificates again. He said he had got the replacement certificate from the issuing authority, the school. But there is nothing on record showing that he travelled to the United States to personally collect the certificate from the university. The big man probably sent someone, and who could that be? And if the person faked the stuff without his knowledge, why did he do that to our president? Now, the whole world knows that what the president holds is not from the university; it is a counterfeit made by characters who would easily con Ali in ‘Ali and the Angel.’
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Everyone around the president is saying the same thing: how a certificate is procured does not matter. They endorse what they themselves won’t accept from anyone. No one among the president’s men is seeing the big elephant in the Villa.
People who deceive kings don’t speak to problems; they avoid them. Why fake a certificate you supposedly earned? That is a question we are asking on this side which Tinubu’s men dare not ask. A friend who said she was sure Tinubu schooled at the Chicago State University asked the question, sighed and said it was “deeply puzzling.” I can’t understand it either. You claimed that you were in that school and the university swore that you were their student. The university claimed that you applied to the school for a certificate. You did not go pick that copy up but when it was time to submit one to INEC, you went to a fake certificate website and printed one! Who did that to you? Even then you had other options; our law does not make having a university degree mandatory for eligibility for elective positions, including the presidential post. All you needed was “educated up to school certificate or its equivalent.” We may not have ever seen your O’ Level results/certificate but we saw a copy of an A’ Level certificate among the many documents released by Chicago State University to Atiku Abubakar last week Monday. The certificate with number 28705 for November/December 1970 bears your name: Bola A. Tinubu with Physics, Chemistry and Biology recorded for you and it says you passed the three subjects. Why did you not simply submit that Cambridge A’ Level certificate to INEC and avoid this Chicago certificate wahala completely? It is puzzling. I am sure the people around the president are humming these questions but they are afraid to ask him. It is political and financial suicide to tell the king that his nose is mucky.
No one is telling the president that the present issue is not whether or not he schooled in Chicago State University and graduated. No one has told him that the issue is that he submitted to INEC a certificate that was not produced by the authority that had the legal authority to produce it. The raging issue is not about what qualified him for the election; it is about what disqualified him. I read some persons of knowledge arguing that anyone could print a certificate as long as he earned the qualification. The ones I argued with, I told them that would be a criminal offence under our laws. One of them told me I was wrong. He likened my argument to someone being accused of stealing their own property. And I found that funny too and told him so. I told him he could be found guilty of theft of a property even if he was the owner. I told him to ask lawyers and ask the Supreme Court.
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Our constitution and the Electoral Act say anyone who has ever submitted a forged certificate to the electoral commission is disqualified from all elective positions in Nigeria. And, our Supreme Court has said ‘certificate’ goes beyond educational certificates. A document is deemed forged when the maker is not the authority statutorily empowered to make it, or it contains falsely made or procured content. The Black’s Law Dictionary defines ‘forge’ as “to fabricate, construct, or prepare one thing in imitation of another thing…to counterfeit or make falsely.” And counterfeit means “to forge; to copy or imitate, without authority or right, and with a view to deceive or defraud, by passing the copy or thing forged for that which is original or genuine.” ‘Forgery’, according to the dictionary, is “falsely making or materially altering, with intent to defraud, any writing which, if genuine, might apparently be of legal efficacy or the foundation of a legal liability.” Our criminal laws adequately capture these definitions in their provisions against the crime of forgery. In Chicago’s United States, what the courts have said there are not different from what our law says here. In the case of Moskal vs United States (1990), the Supreme Court held that a “falsely made” document includes a document which is genuinely what it purports to be, but which contains information that the maker knows to be false, or even information that the maker does not know to be false but that someone who causes him to insert it knows to be false. The certificate which our president submitted to INEC contains signatures of persons who were not where the document says they were when it was made. The document is dated 1979 but Tinubu did not claim losing the original certificate in 1979 so the replacement could not have been made in 1979. The people who signed it held no position in that university in 1979 but the document says they did. The legal authority that should issue it says it never did.
‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ is an old story we’ve read in adaptation. In some places, the story says: ‘The King is Naked.’ While something tells me Tinubu may not have personally ordered that a certificate be downloaded and printed for him from the Internet, I am, however, shocked that neither he nor any of his famed smart boys saw the obvious errors on the face of the document before it became a snake in the bed of power. The man may have mismanaged himself in the past but with that document, his present managers have done him “irreparable damage.” If he had real friends around him and they saw what he held, he wouldn’t be caught wearing magnificent nakedness as his royal robe. I know you’ve heard or read ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’; it is the cultural equivalent of Tinubu’s new certificate and the consequences of its creation. The story is of an emperor who conned himself into nakedness and danced nude through the length and breadth of his empire. I give the credit of the lore to Danish folklorist, Hans Christian Andersen, who wrote the original story, and of the borrowed paragraphs to Jean Hersholt who rendered its translation in English so that you and I could benefit from its lessons. It is the story of an emperor who loved great clothes and would give anything to have the latest in town. The emperor in the story loved dresses and coveted being celebrated as the greatest strategist in town. One day, the smart emperor received two swindlers as guests. They told him they were weavers of the finest fabrics anyone could get. More importantly, they told the emperor, in the presence of his people, that the cloth they would make for him would be invisible to any one among the people, especially his ministers, who was a fool and too stupid to hold a public office. The emperor loved that. “Those would be just the clothes for me. If I wore them I would be able to discover which men in my empire are unfit for their posts. And I could tell the wise men from the fools.”
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The emperor paid the two swindlers a large sum of money to start work at once. The ‘weavers’ set up two looms and pretended to weave, though there was nothing on the looms. The whole town knew about the cloth’s peculiar power, and all were impatient to find out how stupid their neighbors were. The people trooped there, saw nothing but praised what they saw. Then the Emperor himself came out and went to his miracle workers. The dress was ready, the emperor saw nothing but because he mustn’t be said to be stupid, he said what he saw was magnificent. The conmen dressed him up in fakery. “His Majesty looks great,” he got praised by everyone around for the beauty of the nothing he was putting on. That was how the emperor was clothed in nakedness and led in a procession round the town. Then the voice of a little boy rang out in the market square: “But he hasn’t got anything on.” One person whispered to another what the child had said, “He hasn’t anything on. A child says he hasn’t anything on.”
“But he hasn’t got anything on!” the whole town cried out at last.
The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he still decreed that “this procession has got to go on.” And the emperor walked more proudly than ever round the town, in utter nudity.
The king is naked. If you are truly his friend, tell him.
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FG Security Agency, Nigerian Army Move To Tackle Illicit Small Arms, Light Weapons
Published
5 hours agoon
August 27, 2025By
Editor
The National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW), Northeast Zonal Centre, under the Office of the National Security Adviser to the President has partnered with the Nigerian Army to fight the menace of the proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons in the country.
Speaking during a courtesy visit to Brig.-Gen. U.V Unachukwu, the General Officer Commanding (GOC) 7 Division, Nigerian Army Headquarters in Maiduguri on Wednesday, Maj-:Gen Abubakar Adamu (Rtd), the Northeast Zonal Coordinator, NCCSALW Northeast Zonal Centre, said the collaboration was necessary in mopping up Small Arms and Light Weapons (SALW) in the Zone.
While stating the negative impact the proliferation of illicit SALW has on peaceful coexistence in the nation and its socio-economic activities, Adamu pledged the Centre’s continuous cooperation with the Division especially in intelligence sharing which he said, was paramount in preventing the proliferation of this SALW in the country.
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“One of our responsibilities is to prevent the proliferation of small Arms and Light Weapons and to also enlighten the people. We are a multi agency department and we have the police, the DSS, and also retired military officers as well as serving military officers.
“We have been empowered to receive all illicit small arms and light weapons that have been retrieved from all the agencies and we are the people responsible to destroy them
“We are also the only organization empowered to prosecute gun runners and all the people that have been arrested in terms of dealing with small arms and light weapons.
“What we are doing is to visit major stakeholders and to also share intelligence, information and to collaborate because we know without the armed forces, there is no way we can eradicate the proliferation of small Arms and Light Weapons,” he said.
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He further commended the Nigerian Army for always being at the forefront in ensuring that country is safe for all to live in, promising to strengthen the partnership in order to further make the country a better place for all to live.
Responding, Brig.-Gen. U.V Unachukwu promised the Division’s support to the Zonal Centre so as to achieve its mandate while recalling the pass records of the Zonal Director as a result-oriented senior officer.
He also commended the Centre for working hand in hand with all the security agencies, traditional rulers and key stakeholders, adding that this would go a long way in mopping up and tackling the proliferation of illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons in the country.

The management of Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma has responded to a recent publication by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), AAU Chapter, alleging that the Acting Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sunday Olowo Samuel, claimed to have cleared all staff arrears.
A statement issued by Otunba Mike Aladenika, Principal Assistant Registrar and Head of Information, Protocol, and Public Relations, described the claim by ASUU as far from the truth.
Aladenika said the Acting Vice-Chancellor’s 31-paragraph address to journalists did not state that all outstanding salary arrears had been paid.
He noted that instead, the VC emphasized the administration’s commitment to gradual liquidation of these arrears.
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According to the imagemaker of the university, the Vice-Chancellor, in his speech, rather highlighted prompt payment of salaries and pensions as a hallmark of his administration, and noted that the university had implemented the new minimum wage of N70,000 as soon as it was approved.
Aladenika questioned where ASUU got their information from, given the Acting Vice-Chancellor’s clear statements.
“It’s worth noting that when the current administration took over, ASUU members were owed over 35 months in arrears.
“However, the debt has since been reduced as those owed 35 months and above were paid 10 months emblock in the 1st tranch, while in the 2nd tranch, those owe 20-months and above were also paid 10 months salary arrears, emblock. Apart from individuals among them who got paid on personal requests, the payment of the backlogs is still ongoing as various applications on salary arrears are been attended to, demonstrating the management’s commitment to gradual payment.
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“On the issue of the 13th month salary, it’s essential to clarify that this has never been a right, but rather a subject of tripartite negotiations between workers, management, and the state government. There has been no prior agreement or understanding on this matter, and it has always been a point of negotiation for our unions.
“It’s worth noting that the university has never paid 13 months’ salary in a 12-month financial year. However, this doesn’t mean that the management is opposed to negotiations on the matter. Rather, we believe that it’s essential to approach such discussions in a constructive manner, rather than using it as a bargaining chip for blackmail.
“The management is open to negotiations, but we urge all parties to engage in good faith and avoid misrepresentations.”
News
US Court Sentences Osun Monarch To Prison Over $4.2m Fraud
Published
6 hours agoon
August 27, 2025By
Editor
A United States District Court has sentenced the Apetu of Ipetumodu in Osun State, Oba Joseph Oloyede, to four years and eight months imprisonment over a $4.2million COVID-19 relief fraud scandal.
Justice Christopher Boyko while delivering the sentence on Tuesday, also ordered the monarch to pay $4.2 million in restitution.
According Osun Defender, the monarch was also ordered to pay the sum of $195,000 to the IRS for filing a false tax return.
Justice Boyko also ordered Oloyede to forfeit $96,000 in money seized from his bank account and his home on Foote Road that he bought in 2021 for $130,000.
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Boyko said Oloyede was a “very smart guy who did a lot of stupid things.”
Oba Oloyede, a US-based accountant and information system expert, was appointed the new Apetu in July 2019.
The monarch was arrested alongside alongside Nigerian pastor, Edward Oluwasanmi in early 2024 for their roles in a scheme to fraudulently obtain $4.2m in COVID-19 relief funds.
The two men were charged with 13 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud, money laundering, and engaging in monetary transactions in criminally derived property.
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