A United States court in Eastern Illinois has ordered the Chicago State University to release the academic records of President Bola Tinubu to his rival presidential candidate in the 25 February election, Atiku Abubakar.
Jeffrey Gilbert, a US magistrate judge, gave the ruling on Tuesday, ordering the university to produce “all relevant and non-privileged documents” to Atiku within two days.
On 2 August, Atiku filed an application requesting from the university the academic documents of Mr Tinubu. Atiku, a former vice president of Nigeria, is challenging the authenticity of the Chicago State University diploma Mr Tinubu presented to the INEC before the election.
The former vice president argued that among other things, a “second Chicago State University diploma has since emerged (dated June 27, 1979) that bears the name “Bola Ahmed Tinubu” but also presents with a different font, punctuation, seal, and signatures, than the June 22, 1979 diploma, among other alleged discrepancies.”
Mr Atiku told the US that he wanted to authenticate these documents whether a “Chicago State University diploma in the name of Bola Ahmed Tinubu dated June 22, 1979, that was submitted to the INEC before the Nigerian presidential election in February 2023 is genuine or was forged.”
Atiku added that “under Nigerian law, the submission of a fraudulent document to the INEC would have disqualified President Tinubu from participating in the election.”
When Atiku filed his application in the US district court on 2 August, his petition challenging the presidential election was pending before the Nigerian Presidential Election Petition Tribunal. Therefore, Atiku said his application in the US court was to obtain discoveries that would support his petitions in the Nigerian court of appeal.
Court documents show that a day after Atiku’s application was filed, President Tinubu filed a motion to join in the suit. The judge granted the motion to intervene on 7 August.
In his intervention, Mr Tinubu contended that the discovery Atiku sought was not relevant to the Nigerian proceedings because issues regarding his educational background were not referenced specifically in Atiku’s petition filed with the court of appeal.
“Those matters instead were raised in Atiku’s reply materials filed in support of the petition,” Mr Tinubu told the US court, adding that “the Nigerian Court of Appeal declined to consider issues related to Mr Tinubu’s educational background that had not been included in Petition but rather were belatedly raised for the first time in Atiku’s petition.