Atiku, Tinubu and the Chicago papers ~ by Olusegun Adeniyi

Ever since former Vice President Atiku Abubakar filed his application at the Northern District of Illinois Court, requesting for an order of mandamus compelling the Chicago State University (CSU) to release information regarding President Bola Tinubu’s school record, I have taken considerable interest in the matter.

Complying with the court order on Monday, the school authorities released the documents to Atiku and on Tuesday, their registrar testified under oath. Given the politics involved, supporters of both Tinubu and Atiku are now claiming victory.

But since the American deposition is supposed to be part of the election petition case being pursued in Nigeria by the latter, we must wait to see how it all ends.

The Tinubu saga is a long-running one that began 24 years ago in his first year as Governor of Lagos State. Following his victory at the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primaries in July last year, I wrote a column on ‘Tinubu’s School Record and Matters Arising’ where I traced how it started, dating back to 1999 based on the information contained in his Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) form. Continue Reading…

That Atiku would wait till 2 August this year, two months after Tinubu had been sworn in as president, before commencing his legal inquiry in the United States is what I still don’t understand. How does that help his cause?

Since this is a case I have followed from the beginning, readers may refresh their memory with exerpts of my July 2022 column below:

“One, I was among those unnamed editors of THISDAY in the Lagos assembly report. Instead of testifying before the panel as requested, we visited the chairman of the committee, Hon Jide Omoworare (who later became a Senator from Osun State) in his office.

We explained to him that our information had already been published and we would stand by those reports.

Two, I authored the 29th August 1999 cover story for THISDAY, The Sunday Newspaper, that blew open the scandal. It was titled, ‘From Toronto to Chicago: The Case of Bola Tinubu’.

Three, these allegations predated the advent of social media, so it was possible for the national newspapers to conspire and kill any story at the time.

Although I have decided not to begin my series on the presidential candidates until later in the year, I believe I should set this record straight. A WhatsApp message being circulated implies that certain journalists have ignored the ‘story’ contained in Tinubu’s INEC form where he did not list the primary and secondary schools he attended.

Since all the journalists being vilified by the writer are Yoruba, the implication is ethnic motivation resulting in a conspiracy of silence. The writer did not include my name, but I cannot count the number of people who have forwarded the piece to me.

Some ask why I have ‘refused to write about Tinubu’s certificates’. To the few that deserved my response, I told them the issue had been over-flogged by the media in the past. However, it is important to refresh the memory of those who may have forgotten as well as those who were either not born or too young to understand what transpired.

Shortly after the inauguration of the National Assembly and the election of Salisu Imam Buhari as Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1999, TheNews magazine published an expose that Buhari did not attend the University of Toronto, Canada, as claimed in the sworn affidavit attached to his INEC form.

Among other allegations, the most damaging was that Buhari was born in January 1970 which then put his age at 29. Since section 65(1) of the 1999 Constitution at the time disqualified anyone below the age of 30 from running for election to the House, it meant that Buhari’s speakership was resting on nothing.

On 23rd July 1999, following pressure from the House that had set up a committee to investigate the allegations, Buhari resigned. He was subsequently charged for perjury, convicted and then pardoned by President Olusegun Obasanjo.

What followed was a floodgate of allegations about the dodgy credentials being paraded by several other politicians. That was how the allegations against Tinubu surfaced.

All the papers I received were from a source I was almost certain had given them to other journalists as well. As a responsible media house, we of course needed to verify the claims before publishing.

I enlisted the support of Waziri Adio, who had just returned from the United States (where he was THISDAY’s New York Bureau Chief) with a master’s degree in Journalism from the University of Columbia. Waziri was the person who emailed and received the first responses from American institutions about Tinubu’s qualifications.

We investigated all the allegations. The reporter we sent to Government College, Ibadan met the principal who told him that only the then Oyo State Governor, the late Lam Adesina, could compel the school to respond to our inquiry. We took that as an affirmation that Tinubu did not attend the school.

Did he attend the University of Chicago? A response to Waziri’s mail by their Director of Communication, Mr Larry Albeiter, said such a name could not be found in their records. That also told us something.

Did Tinubu participate in the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme? We confirmed that he served at Haboni Engineering Company, Ibadan in the 1982/83 batch and we obtained a copy of his NYSC discharge certificate, number, OY/FORN/82/9106.

Did he attend Chicago State University? A quick response came that Tinubu graduated from the school. We also got his Chartered Public Accountant (CPA) record and the years he obtained different qualifications.

To cut a long story short, when we thought we had our story of false claims about aspects of his INEC form, Waziri and I sought appointment to see the governor. We met him at a Lagos State government guest house in GRA, Ikeja. He was with his then all-powerful Chief of Staff, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the current Information and Culture Minister.

It was only the four of us: Myself, Waziri, Tinubu and Mohammed. In the more than one hour we spent at the session, we asked Tinubu all questions pertaining to his education from primary school to university. It is an interaction I will never forget and will certainly form part of my memoir when I write one.”

The Value of Life in Nigeria

I read a moving story in PUNCH newspaper yesterday of how a female lawyer, Uduak Adams, survived death by whiskers, after she was wrongly accused of kidnapping a boy. According to the report, Adams had on 16th September gone to Surulere in Lagos to inspect a house she wanted to rent. She asked a boy for directions to the street, and he obliged.

Not long after, Adams was confronted by the boy’s mother who accused her of kidnapping him from their compound and wailed for support. “Immediately, people gathered. They carried planks, and sticks, dragged me, and didn’t give me a chance to explain. They dragged me and started beating me.

“The crowd brought tyres and wanted to burn me. They told me that I was going to die, that even the police and army could not save me. They said they were about to kill me, and I should start saying my last prayers,” she recalled.

Fortunately for Adams, while she was still being molested by the mob, the boy returned. Asked where he had been, the boy explained that after he and his friends had assisted Adams to locate the street, he left to go and play football. At that point, the crowd dispersed, while the mother started begging.

Policemen from Itire Police Division were said to have immediately arrested some of the attackers including the boy’s mother. While Adams should seek legal redress, I don’t expect anything from the police.

In July 2019, I wrote a column, ‘Let me Talk to my Father Before I Die’, based on jungle justice involving the loss of life right at a police station. I am recalling excerpts from the piece to draw attention to the lack of premium we place on human life in Nigeria and the propensity for jungle justice that is driving the menace:

~~~

The video clips are two. Though it is difficult to ascertain which comes before the other. In one, the young man, bleeding and shackled, is in the trunk of a Hilux vehicle as he rails at policemen. In a futile bid to demonstrate he is still in control of the situation; he even threatens them as he scoops his own blood while making a gesture of washing his hands.

In the second, he is lying on the ground. Sensing that his life is ebbing away, he makes a desperate plea: ‘Let me talk to my father before I die’. It is met with a stern ‘God punish your father!’ by one policeman and a cacophony of curses and abuses from bystanders.

Nothing tells a more compelling story of our country than these video clips. There is inherent value in every life. How we react, as individuals and as a society, when someone’s life is at stake reveals who we are. From the video clips, it is abundantly evident that life holds no meaning in our country.

Invariably, we can begin to understand why nothing works in a milieu where the life of an individual can be casually taken. All the talk about quality of life, standards of living and human dignity are hollow. Before you begin to think of education, health, job security and things that advance our quality of life and livelihoods, you must first be accountable for what you didn’t create.

Now, let us return to the video clips. According to social media reports, the young man, said to be an undergraduate, was reportedly arrested for sporting a tattoo, a crime not known to our law. But in the official version as provided by the Ogun State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), a Deputy Superintendent of Police:

“…He assaulted somebody, and he was arrested. On getting to the station, he just took up an axe and was pursuing all the policemen. He destroyed 17 vehicles at the station; he broke their windscreens and side screens. All the policemen and suspects at the station had to run for their lives.

“But when he wanted to harm a policeman that was armed; in the process, that policeman shot him in the leg. Should they have waited till he (suspect) killed everybody? The suspect is a confessed member of Eiye Confraternity. At the station, he suddenly jumped up and drew the axe. He destroyed 17 vehicles; you can confirm from those present at the scene, including civilians.”

I do not want to dispute the police report of the young man’s violent behaviour. The officer who shot him in the leg was also professional, he at least did not target the head. But what followed when the boy was already demobilized is the issue. It was clear to the policemen and those milling around at the station that if he was not taken to the hospital he would bleed to death.

Because that is precisely what eventually happened, we can conclude that it was deliberate. The notion that someone accused of crime is deemed guilty and can be subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment is the greatest challenge of our criminal justice system in Nigeria.

But what I found most shocking was the behaviour of the crowd. They were braying for the blood of the young man! In one of those common conspiracies between the state and society, a life was brutally taken without court trial simply because of broken windscreens.

That Nigeria is a state in serious retreat is no longer in doubt. What is more worrisome is that almost daily, each Nigerian is becoming progressively less capable of performing the critical role of responsible citizenship. That accounts for the total breakdown of law and order and why the law of the jungle operates as we saw with the way a life was casually wasted at a police station without anyone calling for restraint or expressing outrage.

While we complain so much about why our government, (at practically all levels) is not working, we may also need to look at ourselves in the mirror. No matter how much noise we make, the change that we seek in our nation must begin with individuals.

If a society is not compassionate, it is futile to expect the government to be. If a society has degenerated to the level of everyman for themselves, then we delude ourselves to expect anything different from our government.

The sanctity of life, as espoused by all religions and by philosophers including Emmanuel Kant is based on the supposition that “If laws were permitted to embody the idea that in some circumstances life loses its worth, or that some people lack sufficient worth to have their lives protected, individuals would no longer enjoy equal protection of the law so far as their lives are concerned.” When that happens, all other things are forfeit. That is why Nigeria is what it is today.

Whichever way we look at it, what happened at that police station reflects a disturbing reality of our time and society. Gradually, the value we place on lives as measured by how much we are moved by violent deaths is almost nil. Our policemen routinely supervise the extra judicial killing of innocent citizens they are paid to protect.

On our part as a society, we have failed to grow into a community of compassion. Our public would prefer to be spectators witnessing citizen rights violations than act as protectors of those rights. The net result is a collective descent into a Hobbesian jungle where life is nasty, brutish, and short. Continue Reading…

You can follow me on my Twitter handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com