Phrank Shaibu, Atiku Abubakar’s Special Assistant on Public Communication, has indicated that they had petitioned the BBC about a report on Tinubu’s certificate. Tinubu is the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) presidential nominee for the 2023 general election.
The BBC examined the controversy surrounding President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), concluding that there is no proof that the president fabricated the certificate. The title of the report was “Bola Tinubu diploma: No evidence Nigeria’s president forged college record.”
However, in an interview with Channels TV’s Politics Today, Shaibu stated that the topic had been discussed with the BBC’s highest management.
“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 Frank 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.”