Certificate Saga: We’ve Petitioned BBC Over Report – Atiku’s Aide

A Special Assistant on Public Communication to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 general elections, Phrank Shaibu, on Friday, said they have petitioned the BBC over a report on Tinubu’s certificate.

Osun Defender reports that BBC in a report titled “Bola Tinubu diploma: No evidence Nigeria’s president forged college record”, said there is no evidence that the president forged his certificate after it analysed the controversies surrounding the president’s certificate.

Shaibu, however, during an interview on Channels TV’s Politics Today, said the matter had been taken up with the BBC’s top management.

He said that BBC allowed their platform to be used for a hatched job, adding that those who wrote the reports were not in the employment of BBC.

According to him, “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.”