I need Tinubu’s admission records to support my case against him at Nigeria’s Supreme Court, Atiku pleads with U.S. judge

 

 

 

 

Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 election, Atiku Abubakar, has filed a fresh plea at a U.S. Federal District Court seeking the release of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s records with Chicago State University (CSU) to him.

 

A Magistrate Judge had ordered the CSU to release the records of President Bola Tinubu to Atiku. But Tinubu protested the ruling at a Federal District Court.

 

Atiku’s legal team, in a 17-page response, urged Judge Nancy Maldonado of the Federal District Court to dismiss Tinubu’s objections and compel CSU to release the documents by October 3 to enable Atiku present them with his appeal at the Nigerian Supreme Court by October 5.

 

The Judge should uphold the lower court order and direct CSU to produce the documents and set the deposition no later than October 3 to allow time to finalise transcript.

The documents will be sent to Nigeria by October 4, accounting for the time zone difference.

 

The evidence will be filed with the Supreme Court no later than October 5.

 

The documents being sought by Atiku through his counsel, Angela Liu, include Tinubu’s CSU record of admission and acceptance, dates of class attendance, as well as degrees, awards, and honours attained.

 

 

 

Tinubu argued in the senior court last week the release of his CSU records will cause him “severe and irreparable harm”.

 

In seeking the documents, Atiku’s allegations against him revolve around identity theft, age falsification, certificate forgery, and perjury.

 

The core of Atiku’s lawsuit is that Tinubu, a male, allegedly used a transcript from Southwest College Chicago belonging to “Bola A. Tinubu”, a “female”, to gain admission into CSU in 1977.

 

CSU confirmed in the lower District Court the transcript with which male Tinubu got admission into the school in 1977 belongs to a “female” whose name appears in the document as “Bola A. Tinubu”.

 

The diploma transcript was issued by Southwest College Chicago, CSU lawyer Michael Hayes told the court, citing and confirming CSU records earlier released through attorney subpoena to Nigerian civil rights lawyer Mike Enahoro-Ebah.