{"id":66685,"date":"2023-09-25T22:34:10","date_gmt":"2023-09-25T22:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=66685"},"modified":"2023-09-25T22:34:10","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T22:34:10","slug":"tinubu-asks-us-court-to-release-certificate-to-atiku-wants-gender-other-details-blocked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=66685","title":{"rendered":"Tinubu asks US court to release certificate to Atiku, wants gender, other details blocked"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid rabid and recurrent, but yet unproved, speculations that Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, used the admission letter of a female but late student to gain admission into the Chicago State Univerity, he has agreed that a federal judge in the United States of America should give only his university certificate to his political opponent, Atiku Abubakar.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he pleaded with Judge Nancy Maldonado to block all other details, especially the gender and admission records, among others from being accessed by Atiku and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).<\/span><\/p>\n

Tinubu\u2019s prayers on Monday came as part of the ongoing legal battle unfolding at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago.<\/span><\/p>\n

The case was brought by Abubakar, who has been on a judicial quest to establish that Tinubu was not eligible to be Nigerian president despite his election in February 2023.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tinubu won the election by 36 per cent of the vote after Abubakar and Peter Obi, and others shared the balance,cpaving the way for Tinubu\u2019s victory with the slimmest margin in the February 25, presidential election.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tinubu\u2019s acceptance that his certificate be released came after he narrowly escaped full disclosure on September 21 by pleading severe harm to his person in order to obtain a stay of a magistrate judge\u2019s order on September 19.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is harm in allowing discovery on issues and documents outside the diploma,\u201d Mr Tinubu\u2019s lawyers said in their full briefing to the court seeking a review of Judge Jeffrey Gilbert\u2019s order by Ms Maldonado, a district judge.<\/span><\/p>\n

The identity of who was admitted into Chicago State University in the 1970s has been a hot issue after college transcripts emerged that indicated the school admitted a female Bola Tinubu from Southwest College Chicago in 1977.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whereas Tinubu\u2019s lawyers, led by Victor Henderson and Christopher Carmichael, insisted that the documents Abubakar sought wouldn\u2019t be admissible at the Supreme Court, they nonetheless appeared to anticipate the potential for an unfavourable ruling and consequently gave the judge an alternative direction of giving only an order for the school to certify strictly the certificate the president tendered to run for election.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gilbert\u2019s ruling last week required CSU administrators to confirm under oath whether or not the certificate Tinubu tendered in Nigeria was genuine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, the officials were mandated to show a certificate issued to a CSU graduate in 1979, with the person\u2019s identification redacted, and to also turn over communications relating to a letter the school issued to Mr Tinubu in 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tinubu feared that allowing the deposition of CSU officials to go forward could inflict severe, irreparable damage to him, saying Abubakar was only on a fishing expedition to fuel online conspiracy theories.<\/span><\/p>\n

In today\u2019s filing, a man, who identified himself as Olajide Adeniji, submitted an affidavit saying he attended school with Mr Tinubu from 1977 to 1979.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid rabid and recurrent, but yet unproved, speculations that Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, used the admission letter of a female but late student to gain admission into the Chicago State Univerity, he has agreed that a federal judge in the United States of America should give only his university certificate to his political opponent, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":65115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[3497,4664,919],"class_list":["post-66685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-politics","tag-block","tag-certificate","tag-gender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66685","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=66685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}