Activists, under the aegis of Social Rehabilitation Gruppe (SRG), have said the ongoing attempts by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate in this year’s general election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to find holes in the certificate of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is an exercise in futility.
In a statement yesterday, SRG’s Convener and National Coordinator, Dr. Marindoti Oludare, regretted that Atiku, “the veteran presidential candidate who unfortunately will never be president, has begun another one of his many ill-fated sojourns into the abyss of absurdity that will only lead him to being served another breakfast”.
Oludare, a Nigerian-born U.S-based medical doctor, averred that “Atiku and his acolytes are trying to raise doubts about the certificate of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a certificate that the issuing institution is in court defending”.
He added,
“I know you can’t teach an old dog a new trick. Perhaps, this cliché might explain why these people find it hard to fathom basic facts about simple things. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, like many heroes of our democracy, lost a lot during the fight for democracy. One of the things he lost was his university certificate.
“When universities print certificates, they don’t keep a duplicate copy for reissuance, should the original get lost. It is common sense that if a certificate that was issued in 1979 got reissued in 1999, the issuing faculty might have turned round their staff during this period.
“This means that another staff of that same faculty occupying the same position as the departed official will have to endorse the reissued certificate.”
Oludare drew an analogy, recalling that in the past few years, he had had cause to look into a reissue of his Masters of Science certificate from Texas Tech University, his alma mater.
The medical doctor said a direct quote from the reissue instruction page on the school’s website reads,
“Diplomas are reissued in the current format, will reflect the current awarding college for the degree, and bear the signatures of current Texas Tech University and Texas Tech University System officials, no exceptions.”
He said this meant that if the faculty had redesigned/rebranded its logo since the certificate was issued (a common practice everywhere), they would not use the old logo for the reissued certificate.
