Tinubu tells US Court to release only certificate to Atiku; blocks CSU from submitting transcript, other records

Atiku Abubakar, President Bola Tinubu’s political rival, has finally accepted to get only his university credential from a federal judge in the United States of America.

To prevent Atiku and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from accessing any further information, particularly the gender and admission records, the president begged Judge Nancy Maldonado to grant.

Tinubu’s Monday prayers were a part of the continuing legal dispute that is taking place at Chicago’s United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Abubakar initiated the case as part of his legal pursuit to prove that Tinubu was ineligible to be the president of Nigeria even after he was elected in February 2023.

After a falling out between Abubakar and Peter Obi, his running mate in the 2019 election, their potential votes were split into at least two parts, which helped Tinubu win the presidential election on February 25 with the narrowest of margins. Tinubu won the election by 36% of the vote.

Tinubu agreed to have his certificate revealed after he barely avoided complete revelation on September 21 by claiming he would suffer grave consequences from a magistrate judge’s ruling from September 19.

Mr. Tinubu’s attorneys said in their full file to the court, asking for a review of District Judge Ms. Maldonado’s decision by Judge Jeffrey Gilbert, that “there is harm in allowing discovery on issues and documents outside the diploma.”

Following the release of college transcripts showing Chicago State University accepted a female Bola Tinubu from Southwest College Chicago in 1977, the question of who was admitted in the 1970s has been highly debated.

Though Tinubu’s attorneys, headed by Victor Henderson and Christopher Carmichael, maintained that the materials Abubakar requested would not be allowed in the Supreme Court, they seemed to foresee the possibility of a negative decision and as a result offered the judge an alternate directive, directing the school to certify exactly the certificate the president submitted to run for office.

In response to Gilbert’s decision from last week, CSU authorities were forced to attest to the validity of the certificate Tinubu presented in Nigeria.

A 1979 CSU graduate’s certificate, with the graduate’s identity deleted, and correspondence on a letter the institution sent to Mr. Tinubu in 2022 were also required to be presented by the officials.

Saying Abubakar was merely on a fishing expedition to feed internet conspiracy theories, Tinubu was afraid that permitting the deposition of CSU officials to proceed could cause serious, irreversible harm to his life.

An affidavit claiming to be Olajide Adeniji was filed in today’s filing states that the individual attended Mr. Tinubu’s school from 1977 to 1979.