Tinubu’s legal team explains opposition to US Court’s verdict over release of academic records

The legal team of President Bola Tinubu has opposed the verdict of the United States District Court in Northern District of Illinois regarding the release of his academic records.

The Court, on Sunday, had ruled in favour of the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and ordered the Chicago State University to release President Tinubu’s academic record by Monday (today).

The magistrate, Jeffrey Gilbert, had ordered Tinubu’s alma mater to provide all relevant and non-privileged documents to Atiku’s legal team within two days.

Tinubu’s record of entrance and acceptance at the Chicago State University, dates of attendance, as well as the degrees, prizes, and honours Tinubu received from the CSU, are among the documents requested by the PDP candidate through his attorney, Angela Liu.

As the magistrate’s deadline drew nearer, Tinubu’s attorneys petitioned the US high court, arguing that the magistrate’s earlier judgement needed to be reviewed by a district judge.

In the wake of the Court’s verdict, Tinubu, in an application filed by his New York-based lawyer, Oluwole Afolabi, revealed the reason for his opposition to the verdict.

First is that his academic records in issue are not useful in Nigerian courts as claimed by Atiku because “the Nigerian election proceedings and the Nigerian courts have explicitly been unreceptive to the discovery.”

His second reason is that Atiku’s request “is unduly intrusive because it allows the applicant (Atiku) to conduct a fishing expedition into the intervenor’s private, confidential, and protected educational records.”