The presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, has filed a fresh motion urging the United States Court to overrule President Bola Tinubu’s request to stop Chicago State University from releasing his (Tinubu’s) academic record.
The PUNCH reports that Atiku had earlier secured an order from a US magistrate for CSU to make Tinubu’s academic records available to his legal team.
The magistrate, Jeffrey Gilbert, had last week ordered Tinubu’s alma mater to provide all relevant and non-privileged documents to Atiku’s legal team within two days.
Atiku is currently challenging Tinubu’s emergence as the winner of the February 25 presidential election.
The matter is currently before the Supreme Court in Nigeria.
The documents sought by the PDP candidate, through his counsel, Angela Liu, include Tinubu’s record of admission and acceptance at the Chicago State University, dates of attendance as well the degrees, awards, and honours obtained by Tinubu from the CSU.
But as the deadline given by the magistrate drew nearer, Tinubu’s lawyers approached the US high court, arguing that the earlier decision by the magistrate needed to be reviewed by a district judge.
The request for a review and delay of the magistrate’s order till Monday was eventually granted by the US district judge.
Tinubu’s application, filed by his New York-based lawyer, Oluwole Afolabi, advanced two reasons.
First is that his academic records in issue are not useful in Nigerian courts as claimed by Atiku because “the Nigerian election proceedings and the Nigerian courts have explicitly been unreceptive to the discovery.”