According to Portuguese magazine Sábado, the president of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) who claims to have a degree in Electrical Engineering, a course he took in Porto, did not complete his training.
The two higher education institutions questioned by Sábado denied the award of a degree to Adalberto da Costa Júnior: the Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) denied that the director had obtained a degree and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto said to the magazine that had no record regarding the registration of the leader of UNITA.
The case was first made public in 2019 by journalist Carlos Alberto from the Angolan portal 'A Denúncia', who accused Adalberto da Costa Júnior of lying about his background and challenged the politician to publicly present his qualifications certificate.
"I do not believe that this information is true", said Mihaela Webba, questioned by Lusa, on the sidelines of a conference on 'Processes of democratization and development in Angola'.
For the deputy and jurist, "an attempt to lynch" the president of UNITA is at stake.
"As it was not achieved through the Constitutional Court [TC], we are now going to try in other ways and [that process] has already started", the deputy continued, alluding to the cases against UNITA that were the subject of consideration by the TC, which even canceled the first congress where Adalberto da Costa Júnior was elected, in 2019.
On whether the presentation of a false degree could lead to the suspension of the deputy's mandate and whether UNITA would investigate the situation internally, he said that the case had already been raised before and stated: "I am not sure if the university actually denied it".
"We know who owns Sábado magazine and, therefore, the owners of Sábado magazine will have other vested interests to do the story they did," she suggested.
"I don't know the process, I don't know how it happened, I can only say that I don't believe in what Sábado wrote, I can't believe everything I see in newspapers, especially newspapers whose owners are of dubious ownership", he reinforced, adding: "For if you are President of the Republic you don't need to have a degree".
UNITA remains silent on the allegations, although Lusa has already asked for a party reaction to the case.
Lusa also sent a series of questions to the leader of UNITA, including the period in which he attended ISEP, the completion date and final average of the degree and whether it would disclose a copy of the diploma, with no response so far.
