Tinubu asks US court to hide his CSU records to prevent his mockery
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Bola Tinubu has pleaded with a court in the United States not to approve the release of his Chicago State University (CSU) records to prevent his reputation as President from being tarnished further by bloggers and other netizens going after him over alleged criminal enterprsise that allegedly includes identity theft, age falsification, and certificate forgery.
Tinubu is vigorously opposing an application at the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago for an order directing release of his CSU credentials, claiming it will arm Nigerians with more information to rubbish him.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar filed the application asking the court to compel CSU to release Tinubu’s records to support Atiku’s court claim in Nigeria that Tinubu was not qualified to contest in the election on February 25 based on several alleged legal grounds, including certificate forgery.
In his counter argument, Tinubu cited his CSU records released in 2022 to Nigerian lawyer Mike Enahoro-Ebah which he said have been turned into weapons by “bloggers to attack” his character,
“If the purpose of the application is to uncover ‘opposition research’ or provide fodder for news bloggers, then it is not proper,” Tinubu argued in the court on August 23 through his team of attorneys led by Oluwole Afolabi and Charles Carmichael, who is based in Chicago.
“In politics, opposition research (also called oppo research) is the practice of collecting information on a political opponent or other adversary that can be used to discredit or otherwise weaken them.”
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Tinubu, a ‘male’, claims to own a certificate allegedly belonging to a ‘female’
Based on a previous subpoena in 2022, CSU provided Enahoro-Ebah with records that show a certain Bola A. Tinubu, born March 29, 1954, who attended CSU at the same period as the President claimed in the 1970s, is a female, per reporting by Peoples Gazette.
The President, who is obviously a man, filled the forms he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in 1999 – when he contested for and won the Lagos governorship – that he was born on March 29, 1952.
But, unlike what he did in 1999, he did not state his primary and secondary education in the INEC forms he filled in 2022 to run for President, according filings at the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) in Abuja.
Tinubu’s records CSU released in 2022 were first reported that year by West Africa Weekly (https://westafricaweekly.substack.com/p/has-bola-ahmed-tinubu-committed-perjury), an online publication owned by investigative journalist David Hundeyin.
The records were picked up from the website by the army of Tinubu bashers, bloggers and other netizens – mostly youths – who circulated them in Nigeria and across the world.
The gender controversy dominated social platforms like Twitter (now called X), where the majority of posters and commenters questioned Tinubu’s eligibility to run for President, and raised allegation of perjury.
“Those proceedings centre around a self-proclaimed Nigerian ‘public interest litigator’ who utilised a Chicago law firm to unilaterally (without court approval) issue a subpoena to Chicago State University “to test the truth and veracity of Mr Tinubu’s assertions . . . that he attended various educational institutions located in the Chicagoland Area,” Tinubu’s lawyers said in the Chicago court.
“Chicago State University then purportedly provided documents in response. Those documents have apparently been utilised by the public interest litigator and bloggers to attack President Tinubu’s character.”