The legal process initiated by the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar asking the Chicago State University (CSU) for a discovery of President Bola Tinubu\u2019s academic records has got a new twist with admission of errors on the documents.<\/p>\n
Lawyers to President Tinubu while filing their response to Atiku’s enquiry however, blamed the clerk of the 156 year-old school for the errors in his academic documents and certificate.<\/p>\n
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois had given Tinubu up until 23 August to make a formal filling on why his records should not be released to the petitioner, Atiku Abubakar.<\/p>\n
In complying with the directive of the court however, Tinubu\u2019s lawyer said that an unidentified clerk of the university \u201cunfortunately\u201d made the errors as to the dates the school stated on his recently-issued certificate and when he actually graduated, thereby creating \u201cthe appearance of differences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tinubu\u2019s new claim was made before the judge hearing the case, Jeffery Gilbert of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Atiku had subpoenaed the University to make a discovery of Tinubu\u2019s academic records, believing that such discoveries will shed more light on the controversies surrounding Tinubu\u2019s educational claims.<\/p>\n
There have been crises of authenticity about the documents that Tinubu submitted with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and a viral document that the University in the 1970s admitted a female student bearing Bola Tinubu who was born on March 29, 1954.<\/p>\n
While President Tinubu claimed that he was born on March 29, 1952, he had also, at different times, listed 1954 as his birth year in the past.<\/p>\n
In 1999 during his run for the Lagos State governorship position, he had claimed to have attended schools in Nigeria, which included Government College Ibadan, but which he later rescinded.<\/p>\n
He had also recently expunged his primary and secondary education from his records after it was discovered that other schools he listed under oath in his 1999 INEC form CF001 did not exist anywhere in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
However, the documents being sought by Atiku seek to highlight which early education credentials Tinubu submitted to the Chicago University before he was admitted into the institution.<\/p>\n
Atiku\u2019s contention is that Tinubu had presented contradictory claims in Nigeria and the University in responding to a previous subpoena.<\/p>\n
Tinubu\u2019s response, which was signed by his lawyers, Oluwole Afolabi and Christopher Carmichael, quotes in part, \u201cunfortunately, in responding to the illegal and invalid subpoena, CSU made several errors.<\/p>\n
\u201cCSU issued a new diploma for Bola A. Tinubu, but incorrectly wrote the date of graduation as June 27, 1979.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe correct date was June 22, 1979, but that scrivener\u2019s error \u2013 along with a change in the CSU logo, the font on the diploma, and leadership at CSU who signed the diploma created the appearance of differences between an earlier issued diploma and the one issued in response to the 2022 subpoena.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atiku had sued to obtain Tinubu\u2019s school records under a U.S. statute that allows documents available in the U.S. to be subpoenaed for use as evidence in a foreign court.<\/p>\n
He argued that Tinubu had presented contradictory claims in Nigeria and the CSU, in responding to a previous subpoena, had issued documents that contradicted what Tinubu had entered under oath in Nigeria.<\/p>\n
However, Tinubu\u2019s lawyers, led by Oluwole Afolabi and Christopher Carmichael, argued that the August 2022 subpoena that was issued following a request by a Nigerian lawyer Mike Enahoro-Ebah was \u201cillegal\u201d because he had no valid grounds to seek the documents, especially under education privacy rights.<\/p>\n
The lawyers, nonetheless, admitted the documents indeed emanated from the CSU, but an unnamed clerk had mistakenly typed the graduation date.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, in responding to the illegal and invalid subpoena, CSU made several errors,\u201d Tinubu\u2019s attorneys said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCSU issued a new diploma for Bola A. Tinubu, but incorrectly wrote the date of graduation as June 27, 1979.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawyers also said changes in school-authorised signatories and logos, alongside other anomalies like the fonts of the certificate, all combined to generate an appearance of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The legal process initiated by the presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) Atiku Abubakar asking the Chicago State University (CSU) for a discovery of President Bola Tinubu\u2019s academic records has got a new twist with admission of errors on the documents. Lawyers to President Tinubu while filing their response to Atiku’s enquiry however, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":65611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[5976,1996,5946],"class_list":["post-66180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-politics","tag-chicago","tag-clerk","tag-errors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}