President steps up bid to stop release of academic records

Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, on Monday 25 September, intensified his legal efforts to block the Chicago State University in the United States from releasing his academic records to his rival presidential candidate during the last election, Atiku Abubakar, reports the Premium Times.

After obtaining a reprieve from the District Court of Northern Illinois, Eastern Division, with the court temporarily suspending its 20 September order compelling the university to release the documents to Atiku, Tinubu has now filed a more detailed objection seeking to convince the court to reverse the order outright.

Tinubu’s application, filed by his New York-based lawyer, Oluwole Afolabi, is anchored on two broad reasons. 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”. Tinubu’s second reason is 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.”
Full report on the Premium Times site