Don’t release privileged documents —Tinubu begs US court
President Bola Tinubu on Monday pleaded with a US District Judge, Nancy Maldonado to order Chicago State University to protect his privileged information, such as admission records, transcripts, and gender, and to release only his certificate to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s legal team.
The president’s lawyer, Christopher Carmichael, submitted the motion, emphasizing that ‘the most crucial truth has already been clearly and unequivocally proved’ by Tinubu’s alma mater.
OURNIGERIA previously reported that Atiku had obtained an injunction from a US magistrate, Jeffrey Gilbert, ordering CSU to turn over Tinubu’s academic records to his legal team.
The documents sought by Atiku, through his counsel, Angela Liu, include the record of Tinubu’s admission and acceptance at CSU, dates of attendance, degrees, awards and honours attained by the former governor of Lagos State at the university, among others.
As Gilbert’s deadline approached last Thursday, Tinubu’s lawyers approached Maldonado, saying that Gilbert’s earlier ruling needed to be reviewed by a district judge.
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The US district judge eventually granted the request for a review and a postponement of the ruling until Monday.
However, the president’s legal team pleaded with Maldonado on Monday to provide only the certificate and not Tinubu’s other confidential records.
The motion filed by the lawyer partly read, “The most critical fact has already been clearly and unequivocally established by Chicago State University: Intervenor was awarded the degree as he stated. This point is irrelevant to the applicant because he is not seeking anything more than opposition research on a political opponent.
“The magistrate judge clearly erred in granting the application for discovery and concluding that Chicago State University must respond to the document and deposition subpoenas. That conclusion should be set aside and the application should be denied because the information sought cannot be used and therefore is not ‘for use’ in the foreign proceedings.
“Even if a narrow subset of information can be considered ‘for use’ in the foreign proceeding, that is limited to the diploma submitted to INEC. Fishing expeditions into other documents and more document productions must be precluded.”
The development is coming two days after the self-acclaimed classmate of the president, Olajide Adeniji, testified in the US district court that he knows and contested against Tinubu as President of the Accounting Society Club at the Department of Business Admin/Accounting in the same Chicago State University.