President Bola Tinubu has until August 23 to present persuasive arguments as to why Chicago State University should not be ordered to release his academic records to Atiku Abubakar, his rival in the February 25 Nigerian presidential election, according to court filings seen by Peoples Gazette.
 |
| 2023 Presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and President of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu |
This deadline was imposed on August 9 by Jeffrey Gilbert, the new magistrate judge assigned to the case at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago.
Mr Abubakar, earlier this month, requested court approval to subpoena Mr Tinubu’s files domiciled with CSU because he believed the documents would clarify glaring inconsistencies in Mr Tinubu’s background, including publicly-available documents that suggested the CSU in the 1970s admitted a female student bearing Bola Tinubu who was born on March 29, 1954.
The Nigerian president said he was born on March 29, 1952, although he had also, at different times, listed 1954 as his birth year in the past. He also recently expunged his primary and secondary education from his records after it was discovered that the schools he listed under oath in his 1999 run for Lagos governor did not exist anywhere in Nigeria. Mr Abubakar believed the requested records would show which early and high school papers Mr Tinubu submitted to CSU before he was admitted to study accounting there.
Shortly after Mr Abubakar approached the court for the records, Mr Tinubu promptly filed a motion to thwart the request from being granted, citing a U.S. privacy law for students. story: gazettengr.com
