Judge Nancy Maldonado of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has placed an immediate stay on the release of President Bola Tinubu’s university records after he pleaded severe and irreparable consequences to his life.
Mr. Tinubu, through his lawyers, begged Ms. Maldonado, a district judge, that the September 19 order of Jeffrey Gilbert, a magistrate Judge, should be delayed. The judge agreed that the matter might be too severe for Mr. Tinubu to bear and granted a stay until further argument on the matter.
‘This needs to be handled with care,” Ms. Maldonado said.
The judge gave Mr. Tinubu’s lawyers until Monday to file a full brief on the matter before the court. Atiku Abubakar’s lawyers said they would reply to the brief by 11:00 p.m. on the same day.
“I may ultimately adopt the magistrate’s recommendation and allow the discovery to go forward, or I can ask all parties to file briefs afresh,” the judge added.
CSU officials have insisted that Mr. Tinubu attended the school, but they have also said they couldn’t authenticate his certificate under oath because they couldn’t tell where he found it.