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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Amb Yusuf Tuggar, has said the present administration does not have time to waste on “frivolous issues” following the controversy surrounding President Bola Tinubu’s certificate from Chicago State University (CSU), in the United States of America.
While appearing on Channels TV programme, ‘Sunrise Daily‘ on Wednesday, Tuggar said that the certificate saga has had no effect on the recent international engagements of the president, adding that the issue “is a distraction.”
His words: “There is a tendency to always try to distract and detain people on such frivolous issues as opposed to facing the major issues of development. We don’t have time to waste on that.
“Nobody is wasting time about certificate qualification for somebody who has been a governor of a state, served two terms, and has been on the national stage as a politician.
“You remember that (former) President Buhari had to go through the same thing, where people were actually questioning whether he went to secondary school or not. Someone who had classmates and was the captain; he was a head boy.
“The foreign leaders with whom we’ve been engaging and the international organisations clearly are disinterested in wasting time on such.”
Tuggar added that Nigerians should be focused on the current economic challenges in the country and not on the certificate.
“The economic challenges we are facing – we shouldn’t be wasting time about whether some certificate, whether there is a T missing or an I hasn’t been dotted. That shouldn’t be our primary focus at the moment,” he said.
Recall that the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, had requested President Bola Tinubu’s academic records from Chicago State University (CSU) in an application to the US District Court in Northern Illinois.
The documents were released to Atiku’s legal team on Monday by the university after a United States court ordered that the academic records be released.