Atiku Abubakar, the first runner-up in the February 25 presidential election, has unearthed documents to prove that courts in Lagos convened on Saturdays back in 1973, shutting down controversies as to the genuineness of his change of name affidavit sworn on Saturday in the same year.

As the forgery allegation looms large over President Bola Tinubu, his supporters exhumed Mr Abubakar’s secondary school certificate where he bore “Siddiq Abubakar” but the former vice president provided an affidavit that showed he changed it to “Atiku Abubakar” on August 18, 1973.

Unsatisfied, the president’s supporters claimed the affidavit could not have been genuine because it was stamped August 18, 1973 — a Saturday.

To dispel the allegations, Mr Abubakar’s spokesman, Paul Ibe, on Sunday, said a team that dug into the archives of the Lagos courts found evidence that the former vice-president was not the only one issued an affidavit on Saturday.

One such instance, a hearing notice dated March 17 1973 — a Saturday — was sent to T. Ade Okin and Nigeria Airways. The suit number for the matter was IK/47/1973.

Another document showed that the Ikeja Division of the Lagos High Court sat to hear a matter between WAMAC Limited and Nigeria Cutlery Limited on September 8, 1973, also a Saturday. Suit no for the case was IK/11M/73.

The documents have lent credence to Mr Abubakar’s change of name declaration oath sworn on a Saturday in August 1973.

“The outcome of our findings showed clearly that there are court papers that were signed on Saturdays in the year 1973! Atiku Abubakar’s affidavit was not the only one signed on Saturday as the corn-men would want you to believe,” Mr Ibe said at a presser on Sunday.

He added, “We hope that this discovery into Atiku’s Saturday affidavit by his own media team will rest this issue and provide the opportunity for Bola A. Tinubu’s team to come clean with its decades of forgeries and lies.”