The Director of Researcher and Strategy of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 presidential polls, Dr Don Pedro Obaseki, has claimed that Nobel Prize winner Prof. Wole Soyinka attended the University of Ibadan (UI) but cannot present the institution’s diploma due to him being “rusticated” and not completing his program.
Bellnews reports that Obaseki made the declaration on Sunday in an interview with AIT.
He was trying to establish a similarity between what transpired between Soyinka in his school days and the controversy surrounding President Tinubu’s certificates.
Recall that the dispute surrounding President Tinubu’s academic record has been taken before the Supreme Court by the presidential candidate of PDP, Atiku Abubakar.
Commenting on recent developments on the certificate, Obaseki said the primary question is not whether Tinubu attended Chicago State University or not, but rather whether he graduated or falsified his diploma. He continued by saying the school denied the certificate and even went so far as to declare they had never seen one like it.
“Look, you said he brought somebody that he attended school together; let me just use a very simple example: in the 50s, Prof. Wole Soyinka went to the University of Ibadan, but he cannot tender the University of Ibadan certificate because he was rusticated; he didn’t finish,” Obaseki said.
“So as a result of that, it is common public knowledge that he attended. It is not whether he attended or whether the person is a female or a male that attended; the issue is the certificate.”
“The certificate, as shown in file 26, file 7, of the same deposition, the man stated clearly that they do not recognise it, and they even went there to say this was the first time during these proceedings that they have seen that certificate.”