Atiku asks US court to compel release of records to support Supreme Court appeal
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has filed a fresh plea supporting the ruling of Magistrate Judge Gilbert of the United States District Court of Illinois to compel Chicago State University (CSU) to release the records of President Bola Tinubu.
Atiku’s legal team, in a 17-page response, urged Judge Nancy Maldonado 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.
Per Nairametrics reporting, Atiku also said:
- 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.
Atiku previously obtained the lower court order compelling CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records to him, but Tinubu appealed to the senior court, where Maldonado granted the request for a review and delayed the order until September 25.
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.
__________________________________________________________________
Related articles:
Tinubu has 2 CSU certificates and “either ‘A’ or ‘B’ is fake (if not both)”, lawyer tells US court
Atiku carpets Tinubu admin over deception, exposes its 10 big “lies” in 117 days
Sleaze buster Hundeyin alleges Tinubu’s goons plotting to kill him
__________________________________________________________________
Tinubu says CSU records release will cause him ‘severe and irreparable harm’, appeals court ruling
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 confirms Tinubu’s admission transcript belongs to a ‘female’
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.
Hayes was making his argument in the application filed by Atiku for a subpoena to obtain directly from CSU the academic records of Tinubu to support allegation he committed identity theft, age falsification, certificate forgery, and perjury, all of which disqualify him from the office of President.
Section 137 (1)(j) of the Nigerian Constitution (amended in 2010) says, “A person shall not be qualified for election to the office of president if … he has presented a forged certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commission [INEC].”
