The Nigerian president Bola Tinubu has begged a U.S federal Judge not to allow the Chicago State University (CSU) to reveal the gender, transcript and other admission records to Atiku Abubakar.
Atiku is seeking the preveilance of a U. S. on CSU to release Tinubu academic records.
While Tinubu has agreed that the university could release the certificate to his political opponent, he however has kicked against the release of other records.
The identity of who was admitted into Chicago State University in the 1970s has been a hot issue after college transcripts emerged that indicated the school admitted a female Bola Tinubu from Southwest College Chicago in 1977.
Whereas Mr Tinubu’s lawyers, led by Victor Henderson and Christopher Carmichael, insisted that the documents Mr Abubakar sought wouldn’t be admissible at the Supreme Court, they nonetheless appeared to anticipate the potential for an unfavourable ruling and consequently gave the judge an alternative direction of giving only an order for the school to certify strictly the certificate the president tendered to run for election.
Mr Gilbert’s ruling last week required CSU administrators to confirm under oath whether or not the certificate Mr Tinubu tendered in Nigeria was genuine. Additionally, the officials were mandated to show a certificate issued to a CSU graduate in 1979, with the person’s identification redacted, and to also turn over communications relating to a letter the school issued to Mr Tinubu in 2022.
Mr Tinubu feared that allowing the deposition of CSU officials to go forward could inflict severe, irreparable damage to his life, saying Mr Abubakar was only on a fishing expedition to fuel online conspiracy theories.
“The Magistrate Judge clearly erred in granting the application for discovery and concluding that Chicago State University must respond to the document and deposition subpoenas,” the lawyers said.
“Even if a narrow subset of information can be considered “for use” in the foreign proceeding, that is limited to the diploma submitted to INEC,” they added. “Fishing expeditions into other documents and more document productions must be precluded.”
In today’s filing, a man, who identified himself as Olajide Adeniji, submitted an affidavit saying he attended school with Mr Tinubu from 1977 to 1979.
But Mr Abubakar’s lawyers have long maintained that the certificate has corresponding records that must be released in order to ascertain its owner.
In his order, Mr Gilbert asked CSU to provide an example of a CSU diploma issued in 1979, but with the owner’s particulars redacted, the certificate issued to Mr Tinubu in 1979, a certificate issued in 1979 that carries “the same font, seal, signatures and wording” as Mr Tinubu’s, a deposition of officials to certify released records, among others.
Gazette
