Legal team of Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, has filed a motion to challenge President Bola Tinubu’s plea for Chicago State University not to release privileged documents in his academic records.
The Special Adviser to Atiku on Public Communications, Phrank Shaibu, disclosed to newsmen that the legal team had up to 48 hours to respond to the motion in the US court.
Atiku had earlier secured an order for the Chicago State University (CSU) to make the President’s academic records available to his legal team.
Magistrate Judge, Jeffrey Gilbert, had last week ordered Tinubu’s alma mater to provide all relevant and non-privileged documents to the applicant within two days.
The documents sought by the PDP candidate, through his counsel, Angela Liu, include the record of admission and acceptance at the university, dates of attendance including degrees, awards, and honours attained by the former governor of Lagos State at the university, among others.
As the deadline given by Gilbert drew nearer last Thursday, Tinubu’s lawyers approached a United States District judge, Nancy Maldonado, arguing that the earlier decision by Magistrate Judge Gilbert needed to be reviewed by a district judge.
The request for a review and delay of the order till Monday was eventually granted by the US district judge.
Tinubu’s application, filed by his lawyers, Oluwole Afolabi and Christopher Charmichael, advanced two reasons.
First was 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.
The second reason given was that Atiku’s request is unduly intrusive because it allows Applicant (Atiku) to conduct a fishing expedition into intervenor’s private, confidential, and protected educational records.
But, in a comprehensive 17-page response, Atiku’s legal team presented arguments to persuade Judge Nancy Maldonado to dismiss and reject Tinubu’s objections. They requested that the court order CSU to provide Atiku with the requested documents.
In this request, he presents the reasons for supporting the District Court of Illinois’ ruling and urging Chicago State University to disclose President Tinubu’s records by October 2, 2023.
Atiku has requested the court to compel the release of the records by October 3, 2023, to enable him to utilize these documents in the Nigerian Supreme Court on October 5.
Atiku is urging the court to completely dismiss Tinubu’s objections. Should the objections be overruled, he requests the court to uphold Magistrate Jeffery T. Gilbert’s order and direct CSU to produce the necessary documents by October 2, 2023. Additionally, the court should set the deposition no later than October 3, 2023, to allow for transcript finalization. Moreover, the court should require that the obtained discovery be sent to Nigeria by October 4, 2023, accounting for the time zone difference.
The evidence should be filed with the Supreme Court no later than October 5, 2023.