Tinubu begs U.S. judge to block release of his Chicago State University admission records to Atiku

 

President Bola Tinubu has appealed to a U.S. judge to only permit the release of his Chicago State University (CSU) certificate to his political opponent, Atiku Abubakar, and no more.  

Last week, a Magistrate had ordered CSU to hand over all relevant documents pertaining to Tinubu in the university to Atiku. 

But the Nigerian leader immediately appealed the ruling to a Federal Judge, Nancy Maldonado, praying that the release of the records would cause him irreparable damage. The judge temporarily halted the release of the documents for all parties to present their argument on Monday. 

Tinubu, in his submission to the court on Monday, begged Judge Nancy Maldonado to block the release of his admission records in CSU to Atiku.

Atiku is pressing for the release of Tinubu’s admission records with CSU because he believes there are allegedly inconsistencies in the records. 

Tinubu’s lawyers, led by Victor Henderson and Christopher Carmichael, insisted that the documents Atiku sought has no relevance to his appeal at the Supreme Court where he is currently challenging the election of Tinubu.  

“There is harm in allowing discovery on issues and documents outside the diploma,” Mr Tinubu’s lawyers said in their full briefing to the court seeking a review of Judge Jeffrey Gilbert’s order by Ms Maldonado, a district judge.

“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.