Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has thrown down a fresh challenge to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, demanding that he provide immediate and transparent clarification of his relationship with Belarusian businessman Alex Zingman. The demand comes after the President, during a recent public event, referred to Zingman as his “classmate” from Chicago State University (CSU).
This single comment has reignited a long-standing and deeply contentious national debate surrounding President Tinubu’s academic credentials, a controversy that has dogged his political career for decades and was a central battleground in the legal challenges that followed the 2023 presidential election. In a strongly-worded statement, Atiku’s camp has seized on the claim, highlighting a glaring age discrepancy and accusing the President of deepening the mystery around his past with every attempt to explain it.
The Spark: A Presidential Remark Rekindles an Old Fire
The latest chapter in this saga began during the inauguration of the Renewed Hope Mechanisation Programme in Abuja. In his address, President Tinubu acknowledged the presence of Alex Zingman, a businessman involved in the agricultural machinery deal, and referred to him as a fellow alumnus and classmate from their time at Chicago State University in the late 1970s.
For most presidents, such a remark would be an innocuous aside. For President Tinubu, it was a political landmine. It instantly drew scrutiny due to the long history of questions surrounding his time at CSU and the controversial profile of Zingman himself. Zingman, a Belarusian national with business interests across Africa, has been linked to arms dealing and other scrutinized international ventures. His association with a head of state is newsworthy in itself, but the claim of a shared academic history has provided a direct entry point for political opponents to renew their attacks.
Atiku’s Challenge: A Question of Simple Math
The Atiku Media Office responded swiftly, zeroing in on a fundamental and easily verifiable inconsistency in the President’s claim. According to publicly available records, Alex Zingman was born in 1966. President Tinubu, on the other hand, claims to have graduated from Chicago State University in 1979. A simple calculation reveals that Zingman would have been only 13 years old at the time of Tinubu’s graduation.
This glaring discrepancy formed the basis of Atiku’s scathing public statement, which used sarcasm to highlight the implausibility of the President’s assertion.
“Are we now to believe that the Guinness Book of Records missed the story of a 13-year-old Belarusian prodigy graduating from an American university alongside Bola Ahmed Tinubu?” the statement read.
This question cuts to the heart of the issue, moving it from a simple “he said, she said” to a matter of factual impossibility. Atiku’s team has demanded that the President explain the nature of his relationship with Zingman and clarify whether he stands by the “classmate” claim, given the evidence.
Reopening Old Wounds: The Broader CSU Controversy
This new development does not exist in a vacuum. It lands on the fertile ground of a decades-long controversy over President Tinubu’s academic records, which reached a fever pitch after the 2023 election when Atiku launched a legal bid in the United States to obtain Tinubu’s records from CSU.
The documents that were eventually released by the university only raised more questions. While CSU confirmed that a “Bola Ahmed Tinubu” did attend the university and graduated in 1979, the institution could not verify the authenticity of the diploma certificate that the President had submitted to Nigeria’s electoral commission. The released records contained numerous other inconsistencies, including:
- Details of attendance at “Southwest College” before transferring to CSU, with the applicant identified as female.
- A different date of birth than the one President Tinubu currently uses.
- A high school certificate from Government College, Lagos, a school that had no record of his attendance.
These long-standing mysteries are why the “classmate” claim, which should have been a minor detail, has become a major political issue. For Tinubu’s critics, it is not an isolated gaffe but another piece in a larger puzzle of what they allege is a fabricated life story.
A Call for Transparency and Accountability
Beyond the specifics of Zingman’s age or the details on a university transcript, Atiku’s camp has framed this as a fundamental issue of presidential integrity and public trust. The statement calls on President Tinubu to honour his oath of office, which binds him to “honour the nation’s truth.”
“The Presidency is not a sanctuary for secrets, it is a platform for integrity,” the statement stressed, urging the President to stop avoiding the questions and provide clear, verifiable answers to the Nigerian people. The demand is for more than just a correction of a public statement; it is a call for a full accounting of a past that remains, in the eyes of many, shrouded in mystery.
Conclusion
President Tinubu’s seemingly casual reference to a “classmate” has provided his opponents with a powerful new tool to keep a damaging controversy alive. By linking the long-running questions about his academic past to a present-day association with a controversial international figure, his critics have ensured that the issue remains relevant and pressing.
While the President and his team may view these as old, politically motivated attacks, the glaring factual inconsistency in his latest claim has made it difficult to ignore. The burden now falls on the Presidency to address the issue head-on, as failure to do so will only fuel the perception that there is, indeed, something to hide.
