The presidential candidate for the ruling All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, has informed INEC that he did not attend elementary or secondary school.
On the other side, the former governor of Lagos claimed to possess two degrees from American universities, which he claimed were taken during the military rule of the 1990s by unidentified soldiers.
In an affidavit that he filed with the electoral office as part of his eligibility paperwork for the 2023 presidential elections, Mr. Tinubu revealed the revelations.
In the documents made public on Friday, Mr. Tinubu left the columns for his primary and secondary schooling blank. He did, however, assert that he had graduated with a degree in business and administration in 1979, probably alluding to his earlier assertions that he had attended Chicago State University.
Candidates are required by electoral law to submit their personal qualifications, which will be made available to the public before to the elections.
The most recent assertions made by Mr. Tinubu appear to be at odds with his earlier electoral statements, particularly those made in 1999 and 2003 when he stood for governor of Lagos. He insisted that he had gone to both primary and senior school.
He claimed to have gone to Ibadan’s St. Paul Children’s Home School from 1958 to 1964 and the city’s Government College from 1965 to 1968.
After graduating from Ibadan, Mr. Tinubu claimed that he studied at Richard Daley College in Chicago from 1969 to 1971.
He ultimately acknowledged that he had gone to the University of Chicago and Chicago State University.
Mr Tinubu was admitted to Chicago State University and graduated with a degree in business and administration on June 22, 1979.
A prominent Nigerian lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi, however, challenged all of the submissions as fraudulent.
Mr Fawehinmi, 1938-2009, took the case all the way to the Supreme Court, which dismissed it on technical grounds rather than on the merits.
Ikenga Ugochinyere, an Abuja-based political activist, said he would challenge Mr Tinubu’s filings in court, accusing him of perjury.
Mr Tinubu “commits perjury by abandoning his earlier claim of attending primary school,” Mr Ugochinyere said in a statement. His “new forms contradict his 2007 affidavit that he has primary and secondary school education.”
Mr Tinubu’s spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the alleged discrepancies in his submissions to the electoral commission.