By Ishaya Ibrahim
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, has faulted the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report which cleared President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of certificate forgery, alleging there were vested interests involved in producing the report.
Atiku, speaking through his spokesman, Phrank Shaibu on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday, said one of the authors of the report, Olaronke Alo, was a former presenter at TVC, a television. station owned by Tinubu.
A check on TVC’s website confirmed Alo was an ex-presenter at TVC, anchoring Fashions Finest Africa and WakeUpNigeria before joining the BBC.
Shaibu also said the team of three who authored the report were dishonest when they claimed in their report that Atiku’s media team refused to comment on the story after they were reached. He said that was a blatant lie.
According to Shaibu, while it is true that the authors contacted him to give them a copy of the deposition which he did, they never solicited a comment from him or Paul Ibe, who is the head of Atiku’s media.
Shaibu also said if the fact-checkers were serious in doing a thorough job, they ought to have told Nigerians the date Tinubu graduated from Chicago State University (CSU), the reason he has three conflicting certificates in his name and when he applied and received the so-called replacement certificate from CSU.
Shaibu said the authors smartly glossed over the discovery of Tinubu graduating from Government College Lagos at a time the school was not in existence.
Recall that the disinformation team of the BBC made up of three persons bearing names that reflect Nigeria’s three major ethnic groups – Chiagozie Nwonwu (Igbo), Fauziyya Tukur (Hausa) and Olaronke Alo (Yoruba), cleared Tinubu of certificate forgery in a report titled: Bola Tinubu diploma: No evidence Nigeria’s president forged college record.