Change of name: Atiku not only person to obtain court document on Saturday – Aides

Media aides to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said he was not the only person who secured signed court documents on Saturdays in 1973.

The media aides, Paul Ibe and Phrank Shaibu, made the clarification at a news conference in Abuja.

Ibe said that the clarification was important following attempts by some persons to create a parallel narrative about the public life of Abubakar by securing a court document on the change of name from Siddiq to Abubakar with an affidavit dated August 18, 1973.

He said that the affidavit deposed by Abubakar in 1973, in which he expressed his wishes to be publicly known as Atiku Abubakar, was officially signed on a Saturday.

Ibe said that since Abubakar commenced his discovery journey about the academic record of President Bola Tinubu, several attempts have been made to dent the former vice president’s public image.

He said it was amusing watching some people run around looking for an item they could use to create a parallel narrative about the public life of Abubakar.

He said that all that mattered to the persons was to pick a hole in Abubakar’s public profile; hence, they went into a frenzy that Abubakar’s affidavit was signed on a Saturday.

“So, eventually, they found that the affidavit that Abubakar deposed to on Aug. 18, 1973, wherein he expressed his wishes to be publicly known as Atiku Abubakar, was signed on a Saturday,” Ibe said.

He said that Abubakar’s team made efforts to reveal the truth about the matter because they knew the character of the man that they worked for and the frenzy of those engaging in vain hallucinations.

“We conducted research into the registry of the Lagos State high courts in the same year, 1973, to see if it was really an absurdity to have court papers signed on a Saturday.

“The outcome of our findings showed clearly that there are court papers that were signed on Saturdays in the year 1973!

“Abubakar’s affidavit was not the only one signed on Saturday, as the con men would want you to believe,” Ibe said.

He also recalled that at a time, the former Governor of Lagos State, Babatunde Fashola, attempted to bring back Saturday as an official working day in Lagos, which, according to Abubakar’s aide, was evidence that Saturday was once a working day in the state.

The media aide expressed the hope that the discovery of Abubakar’s Saturday affidavit by his media team would resolve the issue.

He called on President Bola Tinubu to also take the opportunity to come clean on issues about him and his academic qualifications, as done by Abubakar.

Also presenting PowerPoint slides at the event, Shuaibu maintained that Abubakar’s document was not the only one to be signed or issued by the court on Saturday in Lagos State in 1973.

He said that to establish the truth, the Abubakar team made an official request to the Head of Archive Session, Lagos State High Court, Ikeja, and obtained some Certified True Copies (CTC) documents issued by Lagos State High Court on Saturdays in 1973.

Shuaibu presented to the media some soft copies of CTC court documents issued by Lagos State High Court on Saturdays, Sept. 8 and March 17, 1973, to show that Abubakar had nothing to hide about his name.

“As you can see, the outcome of our findings shows clearly that these court papers, or CTC, were signed on Saturday in 1973, the same period the affidavit for the change of his name from Sadiq to Abubakar was issued.

"Abubakar's affidavit was not the only court paper that was signed on Saturday, as they want you to believe," he said.