A criminal complaint bordering on issues relating to perjury on Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Form EC9 has been filed at the Magistrate Court of the FCT sitting at Zone 6 by a lawyer and civil advocate Barrister Mike Enahoro-Ebah. Attached to the request for criminal summons dated Thursday November 10, 2022, is damning evidence of wrongdoing by the APC presidential candidate including document forgery, perjury and potentially even an instance of identity theft.
It will be recalled that on July 13, 2022, West Africa Weekly published a long-read investigative story about the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and his links to heroin trafficking and money laundering in Chicago during the 1980s and early 1990s. Subsequently on November 13, 2022, West Africa Weekly published a documentary based on the story titled ‘Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord to Presidential Candidate.’
The new revelations are the result of months of collaboration between Barrister Enahoro-Ebah and the Chicago law firm Leahy, Eisenberg & Fraenkel Ltd. Working on a brief to verify Bola Tinubu’s U.S. academic and employment records as given on his INEC Form EC9 and in several media appearances, Matthew J. Kowals, an Attorney with the above law firm sent out attorney subpoenas to Richard J. Daley College (formerly known as Southwest College), Chicago State University, Anderson Tax and Deloitte LLP.
At press time, West Africa Weekly was able to get hold of responses to the subpoenas from Richard Daley College, Chicago State University and Deloitte LLP. The documents contained in the responses, which differ sharply from the documents and information submitted to INEC by Tinubu, make up the basis for the legal action filed by Enahoro-Ebah. Among the many discrepancies and omissions as outlined in the action are:
i. Different dates of birth
ii. Failure to provide evidence of attendance of a school that appears on his academic record
iii. Failure to disclose a secondary citizenship
iv. Forgery of a university degree certificate and
v. A potential instance of identity theft.
According to the court documents which are available in full here, Tinubu’s INEC Form EC9 (AFFIDAVIT IN SUPPORT OF PERSONAL PARTICULARS – Particulars of persons seeking elections to the office of President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria), was not made available by INEC to Enahoro-Ebah when he requested for it, despite INEC being legally obligated to make it public. He subsequently filed a lawsuit against INEC (FHC/ABJ/CS/1337/2022), which was resolved in his favour on August 22, 2022.
After beating INEC in court, he engaged Leahy, Eisenberg & Franekel Ltd to verify Tinubu’s U.S. records as stated on the sworn affidavit. The responses to these subpoenas, which were made available to West Africa Weekly shortly after the filing of the court process, show evidence that the APC presidential candidate committed perjury on his Form EC9, which could be grounds for criminal prosecution.
Further, Enahoro-Ebah says that when the discrepancies between the documents subpoenaed from Chicago State University and the documents submitted to INEC were pointed out to the university, a lawyer in the United States suspected to be working for Tinubu, contacted Leahy, Eisenberg & Franekel Ltd, asking them to “destroy” the documents.
Speaking exclusively to West Africa Weekly, Enahoro-Ebah said:
“Chicago State University was cooperative until we sent them the INEC copy of the certificate pointing out the differences and asking them if they issued this. Next thing we knew, an outside counsel contacted our lawyer asking that we “destroy” all documents because he made a technical error in the subpoena or something silly like that. So he [Tinubu] is currently fighting back from the US.”
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While it is not listed on his INEC EC9 affidavit, Tinubu has repeatedly claimed that he was recruited by global consulting firm Deloitte immediately after graduating from university in 1979. There, as an entry-level consultant fresh out of university between 1979 and 1983, he allegedly saved up the sum of $1,800,000 from salary and bonus payments alone.
To verify whether this actually happened, Leahy, Eisenberg & Fraenkel Ltd issued a subpoena to Deloitte LLP on September 16, 2022, requesting all information held on file about Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The response, which came on September 20, 2022, was direct and unequivocal.
On his INEC Form EC9, Tinubu provided no details of his primary and secondary education, even filling in the relevant years as “0000”. Exactly why INEC permitted this clear violation remains unclear, but it could perhaps go some way to explaining the Commission’s reluctance to release certified true copies of the EC9 to the public.
To gain some clarity over Tinubu’s educational background, another subpoena went out to Chicago State University, where Tinubu claims to have obtained a degree in Business and Administration in 1979.
The documents that came back make up the bulk of what underpins Enahoro-Ebah’s criminal complaint against Bola Tinubu. First of all, on his EC9, Tinubu gave his date of birth as March 29, 1952.
On Chicago State University’s records however, “Bola A. Tinubu” has a different date of birth – March 29, 1954.
As mentioned above, Tinubu’s EC9 contained no details of any secondary school attended in Nigeria. On it, he also affirmed that he has no nationality other than Nigeria.
On Chicago State University’s admission records however, he claimed to have attended Government College, Lagos. He also claimed to be “Black American.”
This is important because there is a certain amount of ambiguity as to whether Section 137 of the 1999 constitution precludes certain public office holders including the president, state governors and members of the Senate and Federal House of Representatives from holding dual citizenship. What is known for a fact in any case, is that if Tinubu was indeed “Black American,” i.e. in possession of U.S. citizenship, that would mean that he committed perjury by failing to declare it on his EC9.
As bad as the above infractions look, they pale into insignificance compared to those that come next. For reference, as mentioned in West Africa Weekly’s July expose, there has been persistent controversy over Tinubu’s true identity prior to his arrival in the US. His refusal to include details about his Nigerian education on the EC9 affidavit has not helped to dispel persistent rumours that “Bola Ahmed Tinubu” could in fact, be an assumed identity.
This is worsened by what is revealed on the following document included in Chicago State University’s responses to the subpoena. The document is an academic transcript for “Bola A. Tinubu” from Southwest College (later renamed Richard J. Daley College), which was used to process his admission into the university. On it, the sex of “Bola A. Tinubu” is clearly marked “F.”
Since US law in the 1970s only permitted individuals to legally reclassify their gender after gender reassignment surgery (M.T. v J.T. 1976), it is safe to preclude the possibility that the person now known as “Bola Ahmed Tinubu” once identified as a woman. This raises all sorts of questions about who exactly the APC presidential candidate is, including the alarming question of potential identity theft, criminal impersonation and fraud.
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Even more curiously, as stated by CSU, there are no records for Tinubu on file that contain clear information about who exactly “Bola A. Tinubu” was. No passport, no visa, no social security card, and no driver’s licence.
Still it gets even worse.
The following document was submitted to INEC alongside the EC9 affidavit as proof of Bola Tinubu’s degree at Chicago State University.
In response to the subpoena, Chicago State University reproduced and sent in the exact degree certificate that was awarded to him in 1979. That certificate can be seen below. Evidently, both certificates are completely different.
A line-by-line analysis of the original certificate versus what Tinubu submitted to INEC reveals the following glaring discrepancies. First of all, both certificates are written in completely different font types. It is important to note that the certificate provided by CSU in response to the subpoena is an exact reprint of the original certificate issued in 1979.
has conferred upon…” That is a grammatically correct statement with meaningful sentence construction.
The certificate submitted to INEC then says “In testimony thereof, the undersigned officers of Chicago State University have affixed their Signatures together with the seal of the University in witness thereof this Diploma is granted this twenty-second day of June A.D. 1979.” This is another meaningless and incorrect statement. What it should say, per the original on the left is “In testimony thereof, the undersigned officers of Chicago State University have affixed their Signatures together with the seal of the University. In witness thereof, this Diploma is granted this twenty-seventh day of June A.D. 1979.”
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