The media team of Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has asked President Bola Tinubu to spare Nigeria’s image and reveal the history of certificate forgeries.

The team made the demand at a press conference on Sunday in Abuja, clearing the air on Mr Abubakar’s affidavit to revert his name from Sidiqq Abubakar on August 18, 1973.

It asked the president to explain how he got the certificate he claimed to have bagged in 1970 from Government College College, Lagos, established in 1974, rather than accusing Mr Abubakar of identity fraud and forgery and demanding his major opponent’s affidavit backing his change of name done over 50 years ago.

“Since Lagos is his domain, we ask Bola A. Tinubu to boldly walk into Government College Lagos and make available to the world, just as we have done today, a copy of his 1970 certificate with which he sought admission into the Chicago State University,” the team said.

Mr Abubakar’s media aides, Paul Ibe and Phrank Shaibu, accused Mr Tinubu’s aides and “APC e-rats” of attempting to “create a parallel narrative” about the PDP candidate since the discovery of the U.S. Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago that the institution never issued the president an original or replacement certificate.

“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,” he said.

He added, “So, eventually, they found that the affidavit that Atiku Abubakar deposed on August 18, 1973, wherein he expressed his wishes to be publicly known as Atiku Abubakar, was signed on a Saturday. And voila!”

Mr Ibe said Mr Tinubu’s supporters and media team were primarily concerned about finding faults in Mr Abubakar’s public profile and not the president’s gender, forged certificate and that he “is the Guinea pig student of the Government College Lagos, who was used to test run the school four years before it was founded.”

“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,” Mr Abubakar’s media aide said.

He said it was confirmed that Mr Abubakar obtained the affidavit on a Saturday after research was conducted.

“It is, therefore, on this note that we, yet again, call on President Bola A. Tinubu to follow the example of Atiku Abubakar to clear the air about all doubts and kuru kere about his past,” Mr Ibe said.

“It is embarrassing enough that the FBI and other anti-crime agencies in the United States are poised to start releasing information on our president any moment from now.

“It is more embarrassing that President Bola A. Tinubu will fight tooth and nail to block those discoveries about his past, saying such will cause him irreparable damage. Bola A. Tinubu needs to be reminded that what the FBI and other U.S. security agencies are set to do by releasing the #FBITinubuFiles will undoubtedly cause Nigeria irreparable damage,” he stated.

Mr Tinubu had urged the Supreme Court not to countenance the evidence of forgery submitted by Mr Abubakar because it was never entered into the records or judgement of the tribunal that upheld his election victory and formed the basis of the plaintiffs’ appeal.