President Bola Tinubu-led administration may come to an abrupt end tomorrow following the landmark ruling by Judge Nancy Maldonado, the presiding judge of Northern District court of Illinois in Chicago, which ordered Chicago State University—CSU, to release his academic records to Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party—PDP.
Despite several attempts by Tinubu and his team of lawyers to sway the United States court with unnecessary objections, no nonsense Judge Nancy Maldonado, adopted all the ruling of Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert in the wee hours of today which had earlier ordered Chicago State University—CSU to release his academic records.
Judge Maldonado in what seems to be a brutal smackdown on Tinubu, gave Chicago State University—CSU until 12pm on Monday to release the documents and the deposition of officials of CSU completed by 5pm CDT on Tuesday.
She further warned Tinubu against further appeal as the Court would not entertain such.
This is coming after she said on Saturday that emails from Nigerians anticipating her decision on whether or not she will order Chicago State University—CSU to release Tinubu’s records was quite overwhelming.
NewsBand reports that President Bola Tinubu had pleaded with the US judge to save him from suffering severe and irreparable damage by placing an emergency hold on the ruling of Judge Jeffrey Gilbert who ordered for his Chicago State university records to be made available.
According to Tinubu, the damage he would suffer would be hard to mitigate if the September 6 judgement of judge Gilbert directing the release of his academic records to Atiku Abubakar is not delayed for possible vacation.
“Severe and irreparable harm will be done to Bola Tinubu if the records are released,” Mr Tinubu’s lawyer argued at an emergency appeal before Judge Nancy Maldonado of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago.
“If the records are released, harm will be done and cannot be taken back to the bottle”.
Recall that Mr Abubakar have been seeking to obtain records of Mr Tinubu at Chicago State University, following widespread inconsistencies with the Nigerian president’s academic records already in the public domain.
Abubakar’s application was granted in a judgement issued by Mr Gilbert, who ordered the production of the documents as well as the deposition of the school’s administrators.
The former Vice President is plotting to use the records to demonstrate Mr Tinubu’s ineligibility for president, relying on the constitutional section that disqualifies a candidate who submitted a forged certificate to the electoral office INEC.
Though, CSU officials had insisted that Mr Tinubu attended the school, but they have also said they couldn’t authenticate his certificate under oath because they couldn’t tell where he found it.
However, the latest order by Judge Nancy Maldonado could possibly mark an end to President Bola Tinubu’s administration.
From the constitutional and moral standpoint, if his Chicago State University—CSU records turns out to be forged, it is expected of him to resign immediately. Failure to do, the National Assembly will commence his impeachment process because he has committed an act of perjury.