Certificate Saga: Atiku, Kick As BBC Clears Tinubu Of ‘Forgery’

Phrank Shaibu, a Special Assistant on Public Communications to the 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, says their camp has petitioned the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) over the fact check report on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s certificate.

Recall that in a BBC Disinformation Team report titled “Bola Tinubu diploma: No evidence Nigeria’s president forged college record”, BBC analyzed the controversy surrounding the Chicago State University certificate Tinubu submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), saying there is no evidence that the President forged his records.

However, reacting via Channels Television’s Politics Today, Shaibu said the matter had been taken up with the BBC top management.

His words: “When they said a report by the BBC, I laughed at the level of pedestrianism. The three young people who wrote that report are not even in the employment of the BBC. They are just like a fact-checking team. Let me take one of the authors of that report, Olaronke Alo. As of 2019, he was a reporter and presenter at TVC owned by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“We don’t need the services of a clairvoyant to know how the stories were put together. The first paragraph will tell you they got the true certified copy of the position from Phrank Shaibu. One of the reporters asked me for it and I sent it to her.

“The same report claims that when they tried to reach the Atiku media team, we did not respond. This we have taken up with the top management and we have written a petition to the BBC because they allowed their platform to be used for a hatched job like this,” he disclosed.