The legal tussle between Atiku Abubakar and The President Bola Ahmed Tinubu doesn’t seem to end anytime soon as fresh lawsuits are underway.
Atiku has just revealed his intention to file a motion to counter Tinubu’s request to shield some of his academic details from Atiku.
The Special Adviser to Atiku on Public Communications, Phrank Shaibu has disclosed that their legal team has up to 48 hours to respond to Tinubu’s motion in the US court.
Recall Atiku had secure an order from the US court, compelling Chicago State University to release Tinubu’s records to his legal team.
A magistrate, Jeffrey Gilbert, had last week ordered Tinubu’s alma mater to provide all relevant and non-privileged documents to the applicant within two days.
Atiku is in court to challenge the election of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as President of Nigeria emerging from the Feb 25th presidential elections.
The documents sought by the PDP candidate, through his counsel, Angela Liu, include the record of admission and acceptance at the university, dates of attendance including degrees, awards, and honors attained by the former governor of Lagos State at the university, among others.
But as the deadline given by Gilbert drew nearer on Thursday, Tinubu’s lawyers approached Maldonado, arguing that the earlier decision by Gilbert needed to be reviewed by a district judge.
The request for a review and delay of the order till Monday was eventually granted by the US district judge.
Tinubu’s application, filed by his lawyers, Oluwole Afolabi and Christopher Charmichael, advanced two reasons.
First was 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.
The second reason given was 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.
When asked on Wednesday to confirm if Atiku has filed the suit as he earlier threatened in Monday, Shaibu reassured our correspondent that the former vice president would submit the motion before midnight.
He said, “I am sure you have seen his application. We are working on our response. We have up till midnight today (Wednesday) to respond to them. And we will.”
On when they expect the court to rule over the matter, Shaibu stated that “It is after we have responded to the court, that it will fix the date and inform the parties.”
