Dr. Tunji Alausa, Nigeria’s Minister of Education, has sparked widespread ridicule and outrage after claiming that he visited the University of Chicago and met several of President Bola Tinubu’s classmates, calling the President a “genius.” The only problem? Tinubu did not attend the University of Chicago. He attended Chicago State University, a completely different institution.
In a video circulating on social media, Alausa is heard saying: “I have been to the University of Chicago, and I met so many of President Tinubu’s classmates in person. He is literally a genius.” The statement is a staggering display of either profound ignorance or deliberate sycophancy from the man entrusted with overseeing Nigeria’s entire education sector.
The University of Chicago is one of the most prestigious universities in the world, a private research institution famous for producing Nobel laureates and groundbreaking scholars. Chicago State University, which Tinubu attended, is a public university on the South Side of Chicago. Confusing the two is not a minor slip of the tongue. It is a massive factual error that exposes the Education Minister as either dangerously uninformed about the very educational institutions he is supposed to regulate or willing to lie to flatter his principal.
For the Minister of Education to confidently assert that he met Tinubu’s classmates at the wrong university is an embarrassment to the ministry and the country. If Alausa cannot distinguish between the University of Chicago and Chicago State University, how can Nigerians trust him to fix an education system plagued by out-of-school children, dilapidated infrastructure, and the diversion of TETFund money to finance student loans?
Furthermore, where are these elusive classmates? During the intense legal battles at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, where opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar sought access to Tinubu’s academic records, no classmates stepped forward to defend him. The official records from Chicago State University painted a complicated picture. The transcript submitted to the court famously displayed a gender marker of “F” for female. There were discrepancies in the diploma, conflicting graduation dates, and a deposition by the university registrar confirming that the certificate Tinubu presented to INEC was not the one the institution issued.
If Tinubu was truly the “genius” Alausa claims, why has his academic history been shrouded in so much controversy, forgery allegations, and missing records? Why did his legal team fight so hard to keep the records sealed? And why did the Minister of Education, of all people, feel the need to fabricate a visit to the wrong university to defend him?
This is the height of the sycophancy that has infected the Tinubu administration. Ministers are no longer focused on solving the crises in their ministries. They are busy chasing clout and rewriting history for a President whose own records are heavily disputed. The Education Minister should be addressing the crisis of the 18.5 million out-of-school children in Nigeria. He should be tackling the crisis in public universities and the suffocation of TETFund. Instead, he is on camera confusing a prestigious Ivy League-level institution with a state college in a desperate attempt to call his boss a genius.
Nigerians deserve better than a government where facts do not matter and where officials will say anything to please the President. The Education Minister’s remarks are not just an insult to the University of Chicago or Chicago State University. They are an insult to every Nigerian student, teacher, and parent who expects truth, competence, and accountability from the people running the country.
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