President Bola Ahmed Tinubu formally opened his defense in a petition filed against his election by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and its presidential candidate, Abubakar Atiku, on Tuesday evening in Abuja. The Presidential Election Petition Court admitted as exhibits the educational documents of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from Chicago State University. The petition was filed against President Tinubu’s election by the PDP and its presidential candidate.

The educational credentials that were produced to prove that he attended the American University and graduated from there included, among other things, an acceptance letter that had been extended to Tinubu by the renowned establishment.

Through his lead counsel, Chief Wole Olanipekun, President Tinubu also surrendered his US Visa paperwork, which proved that he had multiple visits to the United States of America (USA) unrestricted between the years 2011 and 2021. These documents were tendered by President Tinubu.

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Tinubu, who provided the documents to disprove the charges of crime contained in the petition against him, also made accessible to the court all of the paperwork of the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) that cleared him for the US travels. This was done in order to debunk the claims of criminality contained in the lawsuit against him.

The court also allowed a letter from the United States Embassy in Nigeria dated April 4, 2003 to be included as an exhibit. This letter was a response to a letter from the Nigerian Police dated February 3, 2003, which claimed that the embassy did not have any criminal records of Tinubu in the United States. The letter was permitted as an exhibit by the court.

In spite of robust challenges to the documents’ and their respective admissibility raised by the PDP and the previous Vice President, the documents were allowed to be admitted.

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The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), who were the first and third respondents to the petition, respectively, did not raise any objections to the admission of any of the papers.

In addition to the educational records, the court accepted the originating summons of a case that was filed at the Supreme Court by the attorneys general of the states of Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, and Sokoto contesting Tinubu’s educational qualifications to run for president in 2023. The action was filed at the Supreme Court by the attorneys general of the states.

Also acknowledged were newspaper articles that reported on multiple lawsuits that had been launched against Tinubu by various organizations.

The next hearing for the petition will now take place on July 5 as a result of the decision made by the presiding justice of the court, Justice Haruna Simon Tsammani.