Foreign Affairs minister decries Tinubu certificate saga, says detractors dwelling on ‘trivial issues’

Yusuf Tuggar, the minister of foreign affairs, asserts that the administration cannot waste time on such “trivial matters” in view of the controversy surrounding President Bola Tinubu’s academic records from Chicago State University (CSU).

Speaking on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, Tuggar said that some of the president’s most recent international events are unaffected by the scandal.

“There is a tendency to always try to distract people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that,” he said.

He argued that a former president, Muhammadu Buhari, experienced a similar issue.

“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 and was the captain? He was a head boy,” he said.

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He added that due to the critical situation of the nation, Nigerians should not be obsessed by certification.

Instead, he asked them to concentrate on development.

”With the economic challenges we are facing, we shouldn’t be wasting time about 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 argued.

In an effort to strengthen his lawsuit contesting President Tinubu’s election in the February 25 election, Atiku, the presidential candidate of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), asked the US District Court in Northern Illinois to order the release of President Tinubu’s academic records from Chicago State University (CSU).

He had asked for the results so that they might be used as evidence in Nigerian courts to prove that Tinubu had falsified a certificate that he had presented to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria for the 2023 presidential election and claimed to have received from CSU in 1979.

Following his move, a US Court ordered CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records to Atiku.

The university, on Monday, released to Atiku’s legal team, a cache of documents connected to Tinubu’s education at the institution and copies of certificates with redacted names issued to other persons about the same time the Nigerian president finished from the school in 1979.

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