THE GHOST OF FORGERY: HOW TINUBU’S TRUTH WAS BURIED SINCE 1999

Aare Amerijoye DOT.B.

On the 29th of September, 1999, Chief Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, delivered what history should remember as one of the fiercest rebukes ever hurled at the Nigerian press. Standing tall in the Lagos State House of Assembly, he did not whisper, he roared, scathingly criticising the media for their shameful neglect of the grave issue of Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s certificate forgery.

Yes, you read that correctly; this forgery scandal did not begin yesterday; it has been festering like an unhealed wound since 1999!

The shocking revelation was published in PM News, under the supervision of none other than Bayo Onanuga, the same man who today serves as Tinubu’s chief propagandist, dancing gleefully around the corridors of power he once interrogated. Irony has rarely been this cruel; the watchdog of yesterday has become the lapdog of today.

Chief Agbakoba, then President of the Civil Liberties Organisation, was invited by the Lagos Assembly to advise the investigative panel probing Tinubu’s perjury and forgery allegations. But what he witnessed disgusted him, a press that had lost its moral compass, and a legislature afraid to stare truth in the eye.

In his thunderous address, Agbakoba declared that even the press had failed to do its duty. He said the media had not done a good job, and it was important for them to return to the duty of making things clear. He added that everyone knew there was something to be said or done about forged certificates, but the whole thing was so jumbled.

Those words were not mere criticism; they were an indictment, a direct condemnation of a media establishment that had already begun to bend its spine before the altar of political convenience. Agbakoba’s statement exposed a dangerous decay: the Nigerian press, instead of defending truth, had begun to nurse the disease of selective blindness.

He further compared the Tinubu forgery scandal with those of Salisu Buhari, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Evan Enwerem, the former President of the Senate. Both men were, at that time, engulfed in certificate and identity controversies that shook the nation’s moral foundation. Agbakoba asserted that even the poorly handled Buhari investigation looked like a masterclass in accountability compared to the sham unfolding in Lagos. His conclusion was haunting; the best investigation, he said, was in the case of Buhari, and what Buhari’s case had done was to set a standard that the nation could not deviate from.

Yet, the nation did deviate, shamefully, spectacularly, and irreversibly.

Adding his voice to the matter, Professor Itse Sagay, a respected legal luminary, also cautioned the Lagos Assembly. He warned that ignoring Tinubu’s forgery would endanger democracy itself. He stressed that no issue of public interest should be allowed to continue without a proper investigation and report which the nation would consider a proper treatment of the problem.

Those were not idle musings; they were prophetic warnings, warnings that Nigeria, in her moral slumber, refused to heed. Today, the prophecy has come to pass.

Twenty-six years later, the same Bola Tinubu stands as President, while the same forgery allegation, embalmed by cowardice, still trails him like a ghost that refuses to die. The same journalists who once wielded pens as swords now use them as sponges, to clean up the stains of political deceit. The same public intellectuals who once thundered for justice now mumble platitudes in defence of fraud.

How did a nation so full of intellect descend into such moral bankruptcy? How did the guardians of truth become the architects of deception?

Let us be clear: no democracy survives on lies. The foundations of a republic cannot be cemented with forgery. A leader whose legitimacy rests on falsified documents cannot inspire integrity, and a nation that celebrates deceit has already auctioned its conscience.

If we genuinely yearn for a better Nigeria, the one thing we must hold in the highest esteem is the unvarnished truth, even when it shakes the throne. We must never bow to these former giants, now clouded by the dementia of moral decay, who have traded conscience for crumbs from power’s banquet.

Chief Agbakoba’s voice from 1999 should still ring in our ears like thunder: the press failed then, and it continues to fail now. The silence that greeted Tinubu’s forgery case was not ignorance; it was complicity. It was a betrayal wrapped in ink and paper, sold under the guise of journalism.

Let history record this, not as another political commentary, but as a warning to a generation lulled into submission by propaganda. When truth becomes a crime, and forgery becomes a qualification, democracy becomes a corpse dressed in borrowed robes.

Those who now chant “Renewed Hope” must understand this; you cannot renew what was never true.

The ghost of 1999 is awake, and it will continue to haunt every false narrative until Nigeria faces her truth without fear.

Aare Amerijoye DOT.B

Director General, The Narrative Force