President Bola Tinubu has raised objections against the release of his academic records from Chicago State University (CSU) to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last presidential election.
Tinubu has requested that the court if inclined to grant Atiku’s application for discovery, limit the release to only his diploma certificate, which he submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as part of his qualification for the 2023 presidential election.
This legal dispute has intensified as Atiku’s camp maintains that Tinubu’s credentials from CSU actually belong to a woman. Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki, the Director of Research and Documentation for the Atiku/Okowa Presidential Campaign Organisation, made this allegation during a Zoom conference hosted by London-based psychologist, Professor Gold Emmanuel.
In his latest plea to the court, President Tinubu argued, “That conclusion should be set aside, and the application should be denied because the information sought cannot be used and, therefore, is not ‘for use’ in the foreign proceedings.”
President Tinubu’s legal representative, Mr. Christopher Carmichael, presented this request before Judge Nancy Maldonado, a Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
The controversy began when Judge Jeffrey Gilbert of a Magistrate Court in Chicago ordered CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records to Atiku, enabling him to substantiate allegations of forgery and perjury against Tinubu during the presidential election tribunal.
Atiku had argued that Tinubu should not have been on the ballot due to the presentation of false and forged documents to INEC. He pointed out inconsistencies in the dates on Tinubu’s diploma certificate and claimed that other CSU records indicated that the President was identified as a female.
While the presidential election tribunal dismissed Atiku’s request for Tinubu’s disqualification over certificate discrepancies, Atiku appealed to a U.S. court, believing it could consider fresh evidence.
However, just before the execution of Judge Gilbert’s order, President Tinubu filed an emergency application, requesting the district court to delay the release of documents until September 25, stating that Atiku would not be prejudiced since he had until September 27 to submit materials for his Supreme Court appeal.
Judge Maldonado, during a telephone conference on Thursday night, agreed to grant the application, acknowledging the sensitivity of the matter.
When the case resumed, President Tinubu asserted that Atiku was seeking “nothing more than opposition research on a political opponent.” He argued that the magistrate had erred in granting the discovery application and expanded it beyond the issue of the diploma submitted to INEC.
President Tinubu also emphasized the privacy protections of educational records under United States laws and contended that a broad discovery request could lead to a fishing expedition into confidential records.
In response to these developments, Dr. Don Pedro Obaseki, representing Atiku, reaffirmed the need for open disclosure of President Tinubu’s CSU documents, as fresh evidence could impact the Supreme Court’s consideration of pending petitions. Obaseki emphasised that the 1999 Constitution does not recognize the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) as a state, challenging the PEPC’s jurisdiction over Tinubu’s eligibility.
