₦airaland Forum

JUST IN: Atiku trying to sandbag me; Chicago university document showing I was female not my fault, Tinubu begs U.S. judge

The Nigerian president’s argument seemed a last-minute push to downplay tomorrow’s hearing by Judge Jeffrey Gilbert.

President Bola Tinubu on Monday begged a federal judge in the United States to ignore records that suggested the person who was admitted into Chicago State University in the 1970s was a female, saying his Nigerian political rival Atiku Abubakar was trying to sandbag him in the ongoing case over academic documents.

“It is established beyond peradventure that it is improper to sandbag one’s opponent by raising new matter in reply,” Mr Tinubu said in a September 11 filing before Judge Jeffrey Gilbert of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. One of Mr Tinubu’s lawyers in the case, Christopher Carmichael, entered today’s argument on the Nigerian president’s behalf.

The response seemed a last-minute push to downplay tomorrow’s hearing by Mr Gilbert, who had recommended that all parties appear before the court on Tuesday afternoon amid strong indications a ruling was imminent in the matter.

Mr Abubakar was asking the court to grant enough subpoenas to compel records and depositions from CSU amid controversy Mr Tinubu’s admission and graduation. The school has continued to present contradictory documents that often throw up more questions than previously conceived.

For instance, at least two different certificates issued by the school in Mr Tinubu’s name are in the public domain. One was issued directly to Mr Tinubu, while the other was issued to a Nigerian lawyer who obtained a subpoena for the records last year. The one given to Mr Tinubu said he graduated on June 22, 1979, having been admitted in 1977, while the one issued to the Nigerian lawyer, Mike Enahoro-Ebah, carried June 27, 1979.

Still, additional records of admission submitted by CSU under the 2022 subpoena showed that a certain Bola Tinubu, who was admitted to CSU also in the same 1977, presented a Southwest College result belonging to a female.

Furthermore, Elnora Daniel, the CSU president who purportedly signed the 2022 certificate for Mr Tinubu, only joined the school in 1998, or 19 years after Mr Tinubu was said to have graduated. She left in 2008 following a financial mismanagement scandal, or 14 years before she purportedly signed the certificate as the current president. of the school.

These, among other jarring anomalies in the CSU records, have rendered Mr Abubakar no choice but to seek full disclosure under subpoena from the school, his lawyers said. The Nigerian politician intends to use the records in his ongoing judicial challenge to Mr Tinubu’s election earlier this year, arguing that the president’s several instances of falsified records should be enough to nullify his eligibility to continue in office.

But Mr Tinubu’s lawyers, noticing the controversy the Southwest College record generated around Mr Tinubu’s identity, told the courts that it was a conspiracy theory and not the fault of the Nigerian leader, without mentioning that the suggestion actually came from CSU records for Mr Tinubu.

“The quoted and referenced portion of the Nigerian court filing parrots conspiracy theories about President Tinubu, including that the degree from Chicago State University really belongs to a female named Bola Tinubu,” Mr Tinubu’s lawyers said. “That conspiracy theory is not an asserted basis for discovery.”

Mr Abubakar’s attorneys, led by Angela Liu, quickly filed a response to let the judge know that the argument Mr Tinubu’s lawyers were making should be ignored and the hearing should be allowed to proceed as scheduled.

“Although Abubakar disputes the assertions made by Tinubu in his Motion for Leave and accompanying sur-response, Abubakar consents to Tinubu’s submission of the sur-response and its accompanying exhibit, Dkt. 27-1, on the assumption that the Court will allow his counsel to respond to the arguments and assertions made therein at the hearing before the Court scheduled for tomorrow (September 12, 2023),” the lawyers said.

flokii:
They won't allow the microphone work so that they can request for 10 million to fix microphone.. na the ijekuje wey our people wan chop no dey make them wise.

Next you'll hear is Japa.. all of them want to japa with their bad behaviour.. If the Oyibos didn't do things right in their place over there, will you find itheir lands enticing or appealing to japa to?. Senseless generation.

Cyberterror:
LP is interfering in another party's internal affair and their traumatized supporters won't call this judgement unjust. Watch them hail the verdict

Tinubu’s Guinean citizenship, perjury ignored because he didn’t have chance to defend them: Appeal Court
The panel was silent on how the president’s manifest perjury should be remedied, especially as the Nigerian Constitution forbids making false submissions to the electoral office.

The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal said it dismissed the evidence of dual citizenship and perjury against President Bola Tinubu because Atiku Abubakar introduced the matter at a time when the president’s lawyers could no longer respond, which the justices deemed to be an “unfair tactic” that would not be tolerated.

According to the full opinion released by the Court of Appeal, Mr Abubakar alleged Mr Tinubu was unqualified to contest the presidency without providing any details to buttress the allegation in his initial petition but later “smuggled in the new facts” of Guinean citizenship hiding under the phrase “further details” when there were no details given in the first instance.

“It is now through their Reply that Petitioners, who themselves seemed to have had no clear idea of what they meant by 2nd Respondent’s non-qualification for the election or simply deliberately kept it back when filing their petition, want to now introduce through their Reply at a time when respondents have no further right of responding to them,” the court held in the September 6 decision. “Such unfair tactics cannot, and is not, allowed by our law.”

The five-member panel said that the matter of Guinean citizenship was a fact that should have been presented as a separate petition rather than as a response to Mr Tinubu’s defence, scolding the former vice-president’s lawyers as being “clever by half” when they introduced the passport that Mr Tinubu obtained from a foreign country.


The passport surfaced after Mr Tinubu had already said under oath that he had never obtained foreign citizenship while submitting his application to run for president.

“The petitioners were only being clever by half when they claimed in paragraph 2.1 (b) of their Reply that they were simply giving, as they put it, ‘further details’ of the non-qualification of 2nd respondent by averring to the conviction, fine, certificate forgery and dual citizenship of 2nd Respondent that they raised in their Replies,” the judges said.

“They had never given any details of 2nd Respondent’s non-qualification and so cannot talk about ‘further details’ let alone hide under such ‘further’ details to smuggle in the new facts they averred in paragraph 1.2 (i) (ii), (iii), (iv) (v) and 2.l (b) of their Reply.”

The judges arrived at the decision even though Mr Tinubu’s lawyers, led by Wole Olanipekun, still defended the Guinean citizenship puzzle, saying it had expired when Mr Tinubu’s passport expired in 2020. The passport was issued on October 6, 2015, and expired on October 6, 2020, but passport expiry does not invalidate a holder’s citizenship.

It was also unclear whether or not Mr Tinubu was issued a new passport following the expiry of the one that was issued in 2015 and tendered in court this year, three years after it expired. Still, the expired document was sufficient to establish Mr Tinubu’s dual citizenship, which he lied that he had never obtained when asked by the electoral office INEC.

Mr Abubakar’s lawyers had said in their initial brief that Mr Tinubu was unqualified to stand election for several reasons, which they then said would be established with evidence at trial. Yet, the judges still claimed the petition was not sufficient in disclosing specifically what would be proven when the trial opened.

The panel of five justices led by Haruna Tsammani said that to adjudge Mr Tinubu — who met the four presidency criteria listed in Section 131 of the Constitution — as ineligible to run for office based on a nebulous “reason of non-qualification” contained in Mr Abubakar and PDP’s initial petition, left all parties involved including the court and electoral commission completely at sea.

“Therefore, an assertion that merely says that a person is not qualified to contest election by reason of non-qualification will leave not just the person so assailed but every other person involved, including the court, at a loss as to what the pleader has in mind,” they said.

The judges, however, failed to disclose how Mr Tinubu’s apparent perjury should be addressed, especially since the Nigerian Constitution specifically prohibits making false submissions to the electoral office. Elected politicians, including governors, have been sacked in the past by the Supreme Court for lying to INEC, and prosecution is also sometimes recommended.

Mr Abubakar, as well as his Labour Party counterpart Peter Obi, disclosed last week that the judgement was fundamentally flawed and would be appealed to the Supreme Court. Mr Tinubu and his allies have hailed the judgement as a victory that would further strengthen Nigeria’s democracy.

Validated:
Tell me which state is administered by a Minister.
When Lagos was FCT, did it not have state governors? You want to bend the law because Tinubu lost elections in FCT?

helinues:
Arguing with you people na waste of time . Sebi una claim before say Abuja people get 2 heads so for a candidate to win Nigeria election, securing 25% in the FCT is a must?

How would this argument different from that?

Programmer47:
When you read the actual content, you'd understand what i mean when I say Apc has nothing to offer Nigerians apart from sensational news.

overall90:
So now it's the cameroonians.lwkm.
Anyways let me educate you a little.
Cameroon was once a unified country colonized and governed by the Germans at beginning of the last century.
So after Germany lost the first world war, the allies blamed Germany for the war and decided to purnish her, one of the things they did was to seize all her colonies and declared them mandate territories.They gave Togo to France and decided shared Cameroon between France and England.So the British in their usual fashion decided to merge southern Cameroon (their own share) with the Nigeria, their near by colony.
So after independence, the southern English speaking part decided to join their kits and keen,it has nothing to do with igbos abeg o.

I Do Not Come To You By Chance.☺️🖤 #TIFF2023

Burob:
Even if you repent today, & embrace Nigeria, it will take @ least 5 years to cleanse the evil you have soaked yourself in.

Rest assured, 1st term of Bola Tinubu, no prosperity for you.

Keep lamenting, it is allowed.

Appletek:
You will see the greatness of this country but will not benefit from it.

Burob:
Na those way no one prosper, no wish well for themselves & Nigeria?

Ever8090:
those ones never lied against God, they went for their greed and everyone was aware of their intentions

plaindealer:
The topic is not about your ethnic group headache, go and start your own thread to discuss your ethnic group..

There's more to life than trolling.

seunmsg:
Peter Obi and his desperate supporters desecrated the pulpit and brought shame to the Christian faith.

Rogue pastors like Enenche, Oyedepo, Ayokunle, Onaiyekan, Oyakhilome etc should be laid on the floor and flogged seriously for lying against God and bringing shame to the holy spirit.