Atiku personally swore a 25-paragraph affidavit to bar Tinubu from 2027; INEC has moved to throw it out

INEC’s own final list of candidates for the 2027 presidential election - not a newspaper’s reprint of it, but the signed commission document, which we downloaded from inecnigeria.org and read - carries this candidacy on page 1 of three. The entry is printed surname first, as "ABUBAKAR ATIKU", against ADC, age 79, with AMAECHI CHIBUIKE ROTIMI (61) as running mate. The qualifications filed with the commission are given as F.S.L.C. WASC MA. (INT. RELATIONS. The list is signed on every page by Rose Oriaran-Anthony, Secretary of the Commission. It names eighteen presidential candidates, two more than most published summaries of the field.

The load-bearing document is a court filing, not a press release. In suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/1888/2026, before Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, the plaintiff is Atiku Abubakar, with the African Democratic Congress as second plaintiff; the defendants are President Tinubu (first), the APC (second) and INEC (third). The suit asks the court to find the President ineligible on the basis of documents already in INEC's custody.

There is one part of this dispute we are not relaying but showing. The suit turns on what Tinubu filed with INEC, so we downloaded INEC’s own signed final list of candidates for 2027 and read the qualifications it prints for every candidate. At entry 6, against the APC, the cell beside "TINUBU BOLA AHMED" contains three characters: "B.Sc". Nothing else.

That is not how the rest of the page reads. Every other presidential candidate’s cell opens with a first school leaving certificate and a secondary qualification before any degree. Atiku’s own reads "F.S.L.C. WASC MA. (INT. RELATIONS". Peter Obi’s names his schools outright - St. Augustines Primary School, Christ the King College, WASC, then a UNN bachelor’s degree. Tinubu’s running mate, Kashim Shettima, files "FSLC GENERAL CERTIFICATE OF EDUCATION B.Sc". Of eighteen presidential candidates, Tinubu is the only one whose entry shows neither a primary nor a secondary certificate.

We are careful about what that does and does not mean. A thin cell in a commission table is not evidence of forgery, and it is not evidence of anything about the NYSC certificate that Atiku’s affidavit concerns - the list does not mention NYSC at all. Candidates file what they file, and the commission prints it. What the document shows is a documented asymmetry in the public record of the candidates’ own filings, on the signed list, in the same election cycle in which the adequacy of this candidate’s filings is before the Federal High Court.

What makes this Atiku's own record rather than commentary about him is the affidavit: a 25-paragraph sworn statement he personally deposed. In it he alleges that an NYSC discharge certificate bearing the name Tinubu Bola Adekunle, held by INEC, is a forgery, and he ties the allegation back through earlier elections. A personally-deposed affidavit is a document a candidate signs under oath in his own name; it commits him to the claim in a way a campaign statement does not.

The opposing filings are equally on the record. Tinubu and the APC filed a joint counter-affidavit on 9 September 2026 denying that they submitted any forged certificate for either the 2023 or the 2027 election. INEC, named as third defendant, went further and filed a motion asking the court to dismiss the suit outright, arguing that it is a gross abuse of the judicial process, that Atiku lacks locus standi, and that the questions raised are hypothetical and academic.

That INEC — the custodian of the very certificate Atiku points to — is the party asking the court to throw the case out is itself the sharpest fact here. It places the electoral commission and the challenger on opposite sides of a threshold question, before any judge has looked at whether the certificate is genuine.

A procedural detail is documented and consequential. Justice Ekwo granted substituted service allowing Atiku to serve the President through the APC, after Atiku's insistence on personal service had delayed the proceedings. The court then fixed 28 September 2026 for hearing. These are the ordinary mechanics of a suit that is live and moving, not one that has been struck out.

Vero reports what the parties have sworn and filed, and no more. The suit number, the paragraph count of the affidavit, the 9 September counter-affidavit and INEC's dismissal grounds are all matched across contemporaneous reporting. What none of that establishes is whether any certificate is in fact forged — a question the court has not reached, and which this report does not answer.

What this rests on

The qualifications comparison rests on INEC’s signed list, read across all three pages by Vero. The suit, the affidavit and the filings rest on press reporting; the Federal High Court publishes no cause list beyond the current sitting day and its case-management system requires an account, so we did not obtain the papers. The candidacy, the printed name, the age, the running mate and the filed qualifications rest on INEC’s own signed final list, read on the page. The court docket and affidavits in FHC/ABJ/CS/1888/2026 as reported by Vanguard; verify via the Federal High Court Abuja cause list for 28 September 2026.

What this does not establish

The thin qualifications cell establishes nothing about the NYSC certificate at issue in the suit, which the list does not mention, and nothing about forgery. We hold no court document: not the affidavit, not the counter-affidavit, not INEC’s objection. The reported filing date of 9 September 2026 for the Tinubu and APC counter-affidavit could not be confirmed from any source and should be treated as unverified. It does not establish that any certificate is forged, that Tinubu is disqualified, or that Atiku will succeed - the court had not ruled as of the adjournment. We relied on reporting of the filings, not on retrieved copies of the affidavits.