Chicago varsity stuns court, says no record of Tinubu’s records, certificate exist

Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago, Eastern Division, Jeffrey Gilbert was left stunned after counsel to the Chicago State University (CSU) told his court, Tuesday, that it does not have any record ‘of the credentials of President Bola Tinubu, who graduated from the institution in 1979.

President Tinubu graduated from the Chicago State University (CSU) with a BSc degree in Accounting and Business Management based on the documents submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) prior to the 2023 General Elections.

However, former vice president, Atiku Abubakar through his American counsel had subpoenaed the Chicago school asking it to provide documents of the authentic credentials of now President Tinubu as a student and graduate of the institution, which he claimed was also an issue of dispute as part of a perjury charge contained in his petition marked; CA/ PEPC/05/2023 at the just-concluded Presidential Elections Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) in Abuja.

 In his suit at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago which resumed hearing, September 12, lawyers of Messrs Tinubu, Atiku, and CSU were made to appear and state their cases to clarify the scope of the subpoena of Tinubu’s academic records to be turned over to Abubakar.

Penultimate week, the CSU agreed under subpoena to tender records of Tinubu’s academic credentials before the U.S court if the latter requests for it.

At the resumed hearing date of the suit, Tuesday night (Nigerian time), Judge Jeffrey Gilbert was left stunned as the Chicago institution told his court and counsel to Atiku Abubakar that the degree certificate presented to INEC by Tinubu was unknown to it, as it claimed that it does not have any document relating to the university certificate issued to Tinubu on graduation.

The school under examination explained further than it cannot provide, verify or authenticate the documents used by Tinubu in gaining admission into the school, including his social security number and date of birth, adding further that it cannot also tell if the degree presented to INEC by Tinubu was real or genuine.

The Chicago varsity though admitted that Tinubu did graduate from the institution, it does not have a record of his diploma but is ‘certain he graduated from their school.’

The school further said it does not keep records of graduates’ dates written on their certificates, ‘only name and the major of the student.’

Atiku’s counsel in the U.S, Angela Liu told the judge that the records used by Tinubu was obtained through a lawyer, Mr. Mike Enahoro-Ebah, who had in June 2022 subpoenaed the institution over alleged the fake documents.

Enahoro-Ebah had first alleged that Tinubu submitted an “Affidavit of Personal Particulars” to INEC in June 2022 as part of a required filing to run for President that included a forged CSU diploma dated June 22, 1979 and other information that is inconsistent with the CSU documents.

The stunned judge, reacted by asking if it is the same person involved in the suit, and wondered why the Chicago varsity could not provide records of its graduates also why the purportedly issued certificate bore two signatures of persons not even in the school at the time of the defendant’s graduation.

Ms Elnora Daniel was not the president of CSU when Tinubu graduated but signed the certificate Tinubu tendered to INEC. Also, the 1979 Yearbook of Chicago State University, which would normally contain the names and photographs of that year’s graduates disappeared from the Ancestors.com website.

The judge also asked why the certificates tendered to INEC were two different copies, to which the schools’ counsels claimed not to know.

The judge then ruled for all parties to transmit to him further evidence in their possession to enable him reach a verdict which will be communicated to them by Wednesday night (Nigerian time).

Atiku’s petition marked CA/ PEPC/05/2023 filed at the PEPT included charges of perjury against Tinubu as a ground for disqualifying the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in the February 25 election.

Atiku had alleged a criminal conviction, certificate forgery, and dual citizenship of Guinea against Tinubu outside the mode of filing a petition.

However, delivering judgement, Wednesday, the tribunal’s justices ruled that Tinubu was ‘academically qualified to contest for president, as it dismissed Atiku’s petition

Justice Stephen Jonah Adah who read the ruling on objections against the petition, expunged several documents tendered by Atiku on the ground that the exhibits were made during the pendency of the petition.

Also, the evidence of several key witnesses of Atiku were expunged from the Court record having been made in manners not known to law.

Meanwhile, effective October, the United States’ State Department said it would start turning over 2, 500 documents representing over 450 pages every six weeks from its archive on President Tinubu.

The U.S federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) now compelled under the country’s FOIA (equivalent of Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act) agreed to release previously kept data on Tinubu.

The security disclosed, Monday that it will begin to release the documents starting from next month, October 2023, which it stated, is expected to contain more details about Tinubu’s drug dealing and his Chicago State University (CSU) certificate that has female as the gender.

“FBI has identified a total of approximately 2500 pages potentially responsive to FOIA requests 1553430-00 and 1587544-000.

“FBI plans a processing schedule of 500 pages per month, with an initial release anticipated by the end of October 2023,” the U.S. body said in a status report docketed on September 11 at the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.

Aside he FBI, the U.S. State Department, Internal Revenue Service, and Drug Enforcement Administration have all indicated readiness to turn over thousands of pages of his records in October.

This is also as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also said it was collating records of Tinubu for release in compliance with the law.

Nigerian investigative journalist, Mr David Hundeyin, conjunction with Aaron Greenspan of Plainsite had petitioned the U.S agencies over their refusal to disclose records of Tinubu or make it public in conformity with the American freedom of information regulation.

“Earlier this year, I sued 5 US government agencies in conjunction with Aaron Greenspan of Plainsite, for their refusal to honour FOIA requests regarding the contents of the files they maintain on Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

“On Friday (Sept. 8) I was informed that they will comply with the FOIA,” David Hundeyin said via his Twitter, now X account (@DavidHundeyn), last Monday.

The development comes as Tinubu’s prior claims around his admission into Chicago State University (CSU) come under additional scrutiny with a fresh lawsuit by Atiku Abubakar, his main challenger at the 2023 presidential election.

Tinubu claimed graduating from CSU after studying Accounting and Business Administration (with a major in Accounting) using his 1970 O’Level results based strictly on high school science subjects  — physics, chemistry and biology.

In 2022, CSU sent records to a Nigerian lawyer, Mr. Mike Enahoro-Ebah, based on a subpoena to the institution, which showed a female Bola Tinubu attended CSU and studied the same course as the Nigerian leader.

The 2022 records showed that a Bola Tinubu had graduated from the school on July 27, 1979, which the school dubbed a clerical error and said the correct date is July 22, 1979, fuelling suspicions that the school might be in on a cover-up for Tinubu.

Tinubu had already presented a certificate that Atiku Abubakar’s lawyers said might have been fabricated because the officials who signed the records were not at the school when Tinubu graduated in 1979 or in 2022 when a reprint was issued.

Atiku, first runner-up in the February 25 polls, believes he can nullify Tinubu’s election victory by presenting records that would show the name, date of birth and gender under which Bola Tinubu secured admission and graduated at CSU.

The just-concluded Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal (PEPT) had, last Wednesday, glanced over the charge of perjury contained among other prayers sought by Atiku and Peter Obi of the Labour Party (LP) as grounds to disqualify Tinubu in their separate petitions at the tribunal.

The petitioners also fielded dual citizenship as grounds to disqualify the APC candidate, just as the PEPT justices also overlooked the prayers.

Last month, Chicago State University (CSU) finally responded to the application filed by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, requesting the academic records of President Bola Tinubu, a former student of the institution, however, saying it will only comply with an order of the court.

The school had initially refused to disclose the credentials of now President, Tinubu on account of protecting privacy of the student.

Atiku had approached a United States court seeking a compellation on CSU to release Tinubu’s academic records.

Releasing its response, late August, to the ongoing case, CSU said it has agreed to release the documents if ordered by court in the United States.

In the response, CSU in affirming that Tinubu attended the institution in 1979, claimed that the documents Atiku requested from it ‘through documents subpoena and deposition subpoena are Tinubu’s ‘Private Educational Records.’

This is also as the CSU said it ‘struggles to understand’ how Tinubu’s  grades and students records from the 1970s, dates, signatories and certificates have any bearing on the 2023 General Elections.

The CSU further argued that since they are not familiar with the legal systems in Nigeria and other legal principles, Tinubu, who is familiar with the issues and directly involved, should himself advance his arguments and objections.

CSU also informed the court that they held a conference with Atiku lawyers who told them that documents cannot be tendered at the PEPT anymore, but that Atiku ‘might’ introduce it when the case is appealed to the Supreme Court.

The American school, therefore, begged the court to rule on the case only after scrutinizing the status of the PEPT and the possibility of any discovery from the documents in the PEPT.

Atiku’s application was spurred by an earlier case in Nigeria precisely on November 9, 2022, several months before the Presidential elections, in which one Mr. Mike Enahoro-Ebah, described as a “Human Rights Defender and Public Interest Litigator” in Abuja, Nigeria, commenced proceedings against Mr. Tinubu by filing a “Direct Criminal Complaint” in the Chief Magistrate Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

In his complaint, Mr. Enahoro-Ebah alleged that Mr. Tinubu submitted an “Affidavit of Personal Particulars” to INEC in June 2022 as part of a required filing to run for President that included a forged CSU diploma dated June 22, 1979 and other information that is inconsistent with the CSU documents.

According to court papers filed by Atiku in the US court dated August 2, 2023, to support the allegations, “Mr. Enahoro-Ebah stated that after Mr. Tinubu made his INEC filing, Mr. Enahoro-Ebah obtained a subpoena from the Circuit Court of Cook County, dated August 11, 2022, and served it on CSU. In response to the subpoena, CSU’s Registrar, Mr. Caleb Westberg, sent a letter dated September 22, 2022, to Mr. Enahoro-Ebah’s Chicago counsel, Mr. Matthew J. Kowals, advising Mr. Kowals that “[t]he enclosed documentation is all the records we have for Bola E. Tinubu.

“According to the complaint, the documents that accompanied Mr. Westberg’s letter included a CSU diploma issued to Mr. Tinubu on June 27, 1979. The June 27 diploma allegedly produced by CSU to Mr. Kowals, and the June 22 diploma allegedly submitted by Mr. Tinubu to INEC, are very different documents. In addition to the different dates, the documents have different seals, fonts, and language. The June 22 diploma has grammatical errors that the June 27 diploma does not have. They are also signed by different persons who are ostensibly officials of CSU. The June 22 diploma has three signatures, one of which purports to be the signature of Dr. Elnora Daniel as President of CSU. The other two signatures on the June 22 diploma are illegible.

“By contrast, the June 27 diploma only has two signatures. They purport to be the signatures of Dr. Daniel, again as the President of CSU, and Dr. Niva Lubin as the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees.

“In his complaint, Mr. Enahoro-Ebah asserts that the June 27 diploma produced by CSU to Mr. Kowals is authentic, and that the June 22 diploma submitted by Mr. Tinubu to INEC is a forgery. However, Applicant’s staff have recently conducted further research into the names of CSU officials with legible signatures on the two diplomas: Dr. Daniel (whose signature appears on both the June 22 and June 27 diplomas) and Dr. Lubin (whose signature appears only on the June 27 diploma). According to public records, Dr. Daniel and Dr. Lubin did not join CSU until the late 1990s—around two decades after CSU supposedly awarded the June 22 diploma and/or the June 27 diploma to Mr. Tinubu.

Applicant’s research therefore calls into question the authenticity of both the June 22 and the June 27 diplomas.

In his complaint, Mr. Enahoro-Ebah alleged the following additional discrepancies between the information provided by Mr. Tinubu to INEC and the documents produced by CSU to Mr. Enahoro-Ebah:

“According to documents produced by CSU, the “Bola Tinubu” who attended CSU was a U.S. citizen, while in the information provided to INEC, Mr. Tinubu states that he has always been solely a Nigerian citizen and has never acquired the citizenship of any other country.  According to the documents produced by CSU, the “Bola Tinubu” who attended CSU was born in 1954, while according to the information provided to the INEC, Mr. Tinubu was born in 1952.

“According to the documents produced by CSU, the “Bola Tinubu” who applied to CSU submitted a prior transcript from Southwest College that identified “Bola Tinubu” as “female.” According to the documents produced by CSU, the “Bola Tinubu” who attended CSU claimed that s/he had graduated from Government College, Lagos, in 1970, while in the information provided to INEC, Mr. Tinubu makes no mention of having attended Government College.

Pursuant to the above,  Atiku, by and through his counsel, applied to the Court for an order granting him leave to compel CSU to release and verify the authenticity of documents purportedly issued to Tinubu by the university.

Going by available court papers, the Court has established that it has jurisdiction over this matter in accordance with US laws which “authorizes any “interested person” to request that a United States District Court order the discovery of documents and testimony for use in a foreign proceeding from persons that “reside[] or [are] found” within its District.”

The court said Atiku has satisfied all statutory requirements as he is an “interested person”; and the respondent, CSU, is a public university established and existing under the laws of Illinois, with its principal campus and offices in Chicago.

Having met all requirements, the court ruled that it will not hesitate to grant the prayers of Atiku.

Meanwhile, Atiku’s lawyer, Ms Liu, confirmed that the Chicago State University provided two similar certificates indicating that Tinubu attended its institution.

Liu said while the first certificate was signed by three people, the other one was signed by two people.

She was speaking in response to a submission by Tinubu’s lawyers.

According to filings by Oluwole Afolabi and Christopher Carmichael, counsel to Tinubu, an unidentified clerk of the university made the error about the date the school stated on his recently-issued certificate, thereby creating “the appearance of differences”.

The counsel of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate said while one document asserts that Tinubu was issued the certificate on June 22, 1979, another suggests that the president received the degree on June 27, 1979.

“The document marked ‘A’ is the certificate submitted by Tinubu to INEC. This certificate is in every material respect, exactly the same as the document marked ‘B’ except for the following.

“Document ‘A’ is signed by at least 3 people whereas ‘B’ is signed by only 2 people.

“The document marked ‘E’ states that Tinubu was issued a certificate on 22nd June 1979 but then proceeded to forward a copy of a certificate (‘B’) dated 27th June 1979. Please note that ‘A’ is actually dated 22nd June 1979, but this document did not emanate from CSU. Only ‘B’ did.

“It is clear that either ‘A’ or ‘B’ is fake (if not both). You cannot have two certificates issued by the same university, to the same person, for the same course of study, but issued on different dates and signed by two different sets of people.

“The documents ‘A’ and ‘B’ both state that Tinubu graduated with a BSc in ‘Business AND Administration’, whereas document ‘E’ (which came from CSU) states that he graduated with a BSc in ‘Business Administration’, Liu said.

Continuin, the lawyer said CSU’s website reads: “The College of Business offers a contemporary business program leading to a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration or Masters in Business Administration (MBA)”, adding that ‘nowhere is there any reference to ‘business and administration’ throughout the website.”

“It is not possible for Elnora D. Daniel to be among those who signed both certificates because she was only the president of the university between 1998 and 2008.

“She was neither president of the university in 1979 – when the certificate was purportedly issued – nor was she president in 2022, when the replacement certificates were issued,” she said.

The lawyer also expressed dismay that both certificates bear different letter fonts and logos of the university.