President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s attempt to silence lingering doubts about his academic history has taken a new twist, one that appears to further complicate, rather than clarify, the controversy surrounding his certificate from Chicago State University (CSU).
On Monday, during the launch of the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanisation Programme in Abuja, President Tinubu introduced a Belarusian businessman, Alexander Zingman, as his former classmate and neighbour in Chicago.
While addressing attendees at the event, President Tinubu said: “To all of you, Alex was my very good neighbour and went to the same school with me in Chicago.” The individual in question, whom the president referred to simply as “Alex”, stood up for recognition.
Though Mr Tinubu withheld the surname, information from various sources, including a profile document reviewed by this reporter, confirms that the man is Alexander Zingman, a Belarusian national deeply involved in African business ventures.
Alexander Zingman was born on 26 November 1966, which makes him 58 years old. He studied at the Belarusian National Polytechnic University between 1985 and 1989 and went on to obtain a master’s degree in business marketing from the University of Illinois, Chicago, from 1991 to 1995.
In contrast, President Tinubu—currently 73 years old—claims to have attended Chicago State University (CSU) between 1977 and 1979. This implies that when Tinubu supposedly began his studies at CSU in 1977, Alexander Zingman would have been only ten years old.
The discrepancy has thrown up a major contradiction in the President’s claim, with Nigerians online and offline questioning how a ten-year-old could have been his classmate in an American university.
Even more confounding, Zingman never attended CSU; instead, he studied at the University of Illinois in Chicago, a completely separate institution, more than a decade after Tinubu claimed to have graduated.
Despite these glaring inconsistencies, Tinubu went on to praise the Belarusian businessman at the Abuja event. “Never did we dream that I would be in this position as president of Nigeria and Alex, a successful businessman from Belarus ” he said.
Zingman, who now heads Aftrade Company, has significant business dealings in Africa, particularly in agriculture and logistics. He has worked with several African heads of state including those of Zambia, Mozambique, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
President Tinubu is currently entangled in a long-running controversy over allegations of certificate forgery.
After the 2023 general election, former vice-president Atiku Abubakar had sought a US court order to obtain Tinubu’s academic records from CSU, citing inconsistencies including documents that showed CSU admitted a female Bola Tinubu born in 1954.
The President resisted the move, filing a motion to block the release of his records and claiming that any discrepancies were due to clerical errors by CSU officials. Since then, doubts surrounding his academic history persist.
Monday’s dramatic unveiling of Zingman, intended perhaps to reinforce Tinubu’s claim of having schooled in Chicago, may have backfired.
Instead of putting the controversy to rest, it has reopened old questions, with new contradictions now added.
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