According to the BBC's Global Disinformation Team, there is no evidence to suggest that the academic certificates from Chicago State University, which President Bola Tinubu submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission for the 2023 presidential election, were forged. 

Despite the certificates going viral on social media and being labeled as fake by some opposition party leaders, including his main rivals Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, the university has released Tinubu's academic records. This controversy even led to a case filed by Atiku in a US court, where he accused Tinubu of falsifying the CSU diploma in Business Administration awarded in 1979, which Tinubu had submitted to INEC.

During the trial, Atiku requested several documents, including:

A copy of any diploma issued by CSU in 1979.

A copy of the diploma that CSU awarded to Tinubu in 1979.

Copies of diplomas with matching font, seal, signatures, and wording were granted to other students and resembled what CSU awarded to Tinubu in 1979.

Documents from CSU that were certified by Jamar Orr, a staff member of the university, during the 12 months starting from August 1, 2022.

However, Tinubu's legal team argued that the documents would not be pertinent to Atiku's appeal against Tinubu at the Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, Magistrate Jeffrey Gilbert issued an order for CSU to furnish Atiku's legal team with all pertinent and non-privileged documents within a two-day timeframe.

However, as per the BBC's investigation, the Social Security Number in the Chicago University transcript corresponded to the information in other documents where Tinubu's gender was identified as male.

The released documents brought into question Tinubu's birth date and his secondary school. One document indicated that Tinubu attended Government College Lagos in 1970, but information on the school's website indicated it was founded in 1974.

Additionally, the British media outlet reported disparities in birth dates between the released documents and President Tinubu's official birth date, March 29, 1952. The CSU transcript listed Tinubu's date of birth as March 29, 1954, while his undergraduate admissions application form had his date of birth as March 29, 1955.

During Westberg's deposition on the forms submitted to INEC, Atiku's lawyer questioned the date of birth on the certificate, as Tinubu had reportedly given his date of birth as March 29, 1952. In response, Westberg suggested that the discrepancies could have arisen from human error.