Chicago State University has now made public the academic records of President Bola Tinubu, in response to a request made by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who was his rival in the 2023 presidential election under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) banner.
Atiku had sought these records as part of his efforts to support allegations that Tinubu had falsified his academic certificate.
Atiku aimed to use this information to challenge Tinubu’s election, potentially leading to its overturn on the grounds of forgery.
Atiku gains access to Tinubu academic records
Among the specific documents requested by Atiku were Tinubu’s admission and acceptance records at Chicago State University, along with details about his attendance, degrees earned, and any honors he received during his time at the institution.
However, on October 2, 2023, the university only provided three out of the four sets of documents requested by Atiku’s legal team.
These documents included Tinubu’s admission records and a letter confirming his attendance at the university from August 1977 to June 1979.
According to the letter, Tinubu pursued a major in accounting and was granted a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with Honors on June 22, 1979.
Prior to the release of these documents, Tinubu’s legal team had made unsuccessful attempts to prevent Atiku from accessing his academic records at Chicago State University.
This came after the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ordered the university to provide Tinubu’s credentials to his political opponent.
During this legal battle, President Tinubu had appealed to United States District Judge Nancy Maldonado to restrict the information shared with Atiku’s legal team to only his certificate, arguing that Atiku’s interest in his educational records constituted an intrusion of his privacy.
However, Maldonado ruled in favor of Atiku, stating that the former Vice President’s interests in the credentials outweighed Tinubu’s privacy concerns.