The battle for the disputed presidential election in Nigeria has taken a new dimension after the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, filed a fresh motion urging a United States Court to overrule President Bola Tinubu’s request to stop Chicago State University (CSU) from releasing his academic records to him.
Atiku’s fresh motion, which was filed on Thursday, is a counter to an earlier order secured by Tinubu from a US district judge stopping CSU from releasing what the President’s legal team termed as “privileged documents” following Judge Jeffrey Gilbert order that the institution should provide all relevant and non-privileged documents to Atiku’s legal team within two days.
Atiku, who is currently challenging Tinubu’s victory in the February 25 presidential election, is seeking the release of privileged and non-privileged records of Tinubu’s admission and acceptance at the Chicago State University, dates of attendance, as well the degrees, awards, and honours obtained by the president from CSU.
However, as the deadline given by Gilbert drew to a close, Tinubu’s lawyers approached the US High Court to file a motion stopping the release of the documents with the argument 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 was eventually granted by the court.
Tinubu’s application was based on two reasons. The first being that his academic records are not useful in Nigerian courts as claimed by Atiku because, according to his lawyers, “the Nigerian election proceedings and the Nigerian courts have explicitly been unreceptive to the discovery.”
The second ground argued
that Atiku’s request was “unduly intrusive because it allows the applicant to conduct a fishing expedition into the intervenor’s private, confidential, and protected educational records.”
In the fresh response filed by the former vice president in Chicago, Illinois, Atiku, however, urged the court to overrule Tinubu’s request in its entirety.
“If the court overrules the objections, the applicant respectfully requests that it enter an order requiring production of documents no later than October 2, 2023, and the deposition scheduled no later than October 3, to allow time for transcripts to be finalised,” Atiku said in the motion.
“The discovery obtained to be sent to Nigeria (which is six hours ahead) by October 4, so that such evidence may, in turn, be filed with the Supreme Court by October 5, which is when applicant’s Nigerian counsel intend to submit any new evidence to the Supreme Court,” he added.
The former vice president also declared that his goal was to test the authenticity and origin of 12 pages of documents, including two very different diplomas, purported to have been issued by CSU, maintaining that there were discrepancies between the information in the CSU documents and the information in the affidavit Tinubu submitted to INEC.
“If, as the intervenor asserts, he graduated from CSU in 1979 and the CSU documents are authentic copies issued, there is no reason why he should oppose the limited discovery the applicant seeks.”