By Ishaya Ibrahim
The U.S. District Court in Illinois has reserved ruling on the request by Atiku Abubakar asking the Chicago State University (CSU) to release President Bola Tinubu’s education record.
Atiku was the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 25 election.
He is challenging the qualification of Tinubu to contest the February presidential election on the ground that the president presented a forged CSU certificate to the Independent National Electoral Commision (INEC).
U.S. laws forbid disclosure of education records of students to third parties unless such discoveries would aid a court proceeding.
Atiku is arguing at a U.S. court that disclosure of Tinubu’s education record would aid in his appeal at the Supreme Court against the declaration of Tinubu as winner of the presidential election.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Atiku’s lawyer, Alexander De Gramont, told Judge Gilbert there are discrepancies in the certificate Tinubu claimed to have obtained from CSU and the duplicate to a lawyer received from the university under subpoena.
He noted that Tinubu has never been a U.S citizen and other series of inconsistencies in the subpoena records, hence the court should allow the discovery.
The subpoena record shows that the Tinubu that graduated from the CSU was a U.S. citizen.
But the Lawyer representing Chicago State University, Michael Hayes, told Judge Gilbert that the university does not know if the certificate Bola Tinubu presented to INEC is forged or not.
He said the University does not keep copies of certificates issued to students, and that the University could not be liable for any forged documents. He added that CSU knows nothing about any forged documents or false filings by Tinubu to INEC.
Judge Gilbert announced that he would not rule today because he needs to take his time to review more documents and possibly come up with more questions for all parties.