Human rights lawyer and former National Human Rights Commission governing council chairman, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, has questioned the publicly available information on President Bola Tinubu’s early education, parentage and nationality.
Odinkalu raised the concerns during a recent interview with Nigeria Info FM, in remarks that have since resurfaced on social media.
The lawyer questioned the availability of records relating to Tinubu’s primary and secondary education, as well as what he described as unanswered questions about the President’s background.
He also questioned whether Tinubu may have received his early education at home, referring to a position he attributed to Minister of Foreign Affairs, Yusuf Tuggar, though he specifically named Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Festus Keyamo, in the interview.
“But what if he was taught at home? And who now claims to have gone to university? If he was homeschooled as Festus Keyamo posited, famously, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria, then they should say so,” he said.
Odinkalu argued that even if Tinubu had been homeschooled, there should ordinarily be some form of certification documenting his educational progression before university.
“Homeschool is a preparatory process. After that you go forward for certification, right?” he asked.
The human rights lawyer also referred to previous educational information allegedly attributed to Tinubu, questioning claims involving institutions such as Government College, Ibadan.
He further questioned how a person could establish a university education without corresponding records of primary and secondary schooling.
“Now they are trying to make up records or to clean up records in order to align with a current eligibility threshold. How do you not go through primary and secondary certification but you have a university degree?” he asked.
Odinkalu also argued that the school attended by a future president should be regarded as significant, regardless of its location.
“Is it not an achievement for a school to have produced a president? No matter how remote the school could have been,” he said.
Drawing from his own experience, Odinkalu said he began his primary education as an internally displaced person following the Nigerian Civil War.
“I started off primary school as an internally displaced person after the Nigerian Civil War. And I know the primary school I started off in, if I mention it to you, it’s not in any place on the map. But I take pride in it and I take pride in the fact that I passed through that primary school,” he said.
The comments come amid renewed online discussions about Tinubu’s background and the records surrounding his early life.
However, the claims made by Odinkalu during the interview remain his assertions and have not, in the material cited, been independently established.
The post Odinkalu raises fresh questions on Tinubu’s academic records, nationality appeared first on Vanguard News.