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Court Worked On Saturday In 1970s In Lagos; I Didn’t Falsify Name – Atiku Abubakar Tenders Evidences
The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Atiku Abubakar, has insisted that he did not falsify his name in his documents as being alleged by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
During a joint press conference held at the Atiku Abubakar Presidential Campaign Office on Sunday where they presented documentary evidences to prove that Atiku’s change of name from Saddiq to Abubakar was done on Saturday, the former Vice President’s media aides, Paul Ibe and Phrank Shuaibu, said that at the time Atiku swore to an affidavit to change his name from Saddiq to Abubakar, courts in Lagos state operated on Saturdays.
Atiku’s media aides presented several documents to prove that judiciary documents were once signed in Lagos on Saturday including a document signed on February 12, 1974, by Board of Internal Revenue and another document by the Nigeria Airways signed on September 8, 1973.
Also presented was a document signed on March 17, 1973 to prove that the signing of Atiku’s change of name from Saddiq to Abubakar was not forgery.
Speaking during the press conference, Paul Ibe said, “Since the discovery of documents with Chicago State University brought to the fore the litany of certificate forgeries and impersonation by President Bola A. Tinubu, there have been attempts by many of his media aides to create a parallel narrative about the public life of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
“It was obvious from the start of their journey into futility that what the media aides and supporters of Bola A. Tinubu were doing was a random bite of the public profile of Atiku Abubakar until they found an item they could chomp with their filthy teeth.
“It was amusing watching them running kiti-kata like a person wey drink water no wan drop cup – as we say in Naija parlance of a restless soul on a fruitless journey.
“So, eventually, they found that the affidavit that Atiku Abubakar deposed to in August 18, 1973, wherein he expressed his wishes to be publicly known as Atiku Abubakar was signed on a Saturday.
“For them, it isn’t important that the person called Bola A. Tinubu was discovered to be the name of a female, nor was it important that Bola A. Tinubu forged a certificate he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission or that Bola A. Tinubu is the Guinea pig student of the Government College Lagos, who was used to test run the school four years before it was founded.”
According to Ibe, all that mattered to President Bola Tinubu’s aides was to pick a hole in Atiku’s public profile.
He said, “Like the late Fela Anikulapo said: I be thief, you be robber! You are also a thief is not a defence to an accusation of theft. They thought they found someone else to share the inglorious stage of certificate forgery with.
“So, it was found out that Atiku’s affidavit was signed on a Saturday, and they went into a frenzy; oiled as a diesel train.”
Ibeh further explained that Nigeria as a country of laws, no one single man or woman, no matter how highly placed, was bigger than our laws.
Atiku’s aides therefore called on President Tinubu to present documentary evidence as they did to show that the Government College Lagos, existed in 1970 instead of 1974.