The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has filed a motion to challenge President Bola Tinubu’s plea for Chicago State University (CSU) not to release privileged documents in his academic records.

A 17-page court papers seen by our reporter showed that the motion was filed on September 27, 2023 with the title: Applicant’s Opposition To Intervenor’s Objections To Magistrate Judge Gilbert’s Memorandum Opinion And Order before the United States District Court For The Northern District Of Illinois, Eastern Division.

In it, Atiku canvassed that Tinubu’s CSU documents should be released in further pursuit of his case at the Supreme Court.

The court paper states that “in those proceedings, Abubakar challenges, among other things, the electoral qualifications of President Bola A. Tinubu (“Tinubu” or “Intervenor”)—including whether he in fact attended CSU and whether he submitted a forged CSU diploma to Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (“INEC”) in 2022.

Atiku argued that “Contrary to Intervenor’s (Tinubu) inflated rhetoric, applicant is not seeking “to conduct a fishing expedition into Intervenor’s private, confidential, and protected educational records. Rather, Applicant seeks to test (1) the authenticity and origin of twelve (12) pages of documents (including two very different diplomas) that purport to have been issued by CSU (the “CSU documents”)1—all of which have already been submitted to the Nigerian courts and widely published in the media; and (2) the basis for CSU’s categorical assertion that Tinubu received a B.S. degree in 1979, given discrepancies between information in the CSU documents and information in his affidavit submitted to INEC. If, as Intervenor asserts, he graduated from CSU in 1979—and the CSU documents are authentic copies issued by CSU—there is no reason why he should oppose the limited discovery Applicant seeks.”

Atiku averred that “the Court should overrule the objections  of Tinubu in their entirety. If the Court overrules the Objections, Applicant respectfully requests that it enter an order requiring production of documents no later than October 2, 2023, and the deposition scheduled no later than October 3, to allow time for transcripts to be finalized, and the discovery obtained to be sent to Nigeria (which is six (6) hours ahead) by October 4 so that such evidence may, in turn, be filed with the Supreme Court by October 5, which is when Applicant’s Nigerian counsel intend to submit any new evidence to the Supreme Court.”

The court has this weekend to rule on the matter.