Atiku Just Walked Into Court Himself to Try to Knock Tinubu Out of the 2027 Race — Here's the Document at the Center of It All

Atiku Just Walked Into Court Himself to Try to Knock Tinubu Out of the 2027 Race — Here's the Document at the Center of It All Atiku Abubakar didn't send lawyers. He showed up in person. On Friday, the ADC's presidential candidate personally appeared at the Federal High Court registry in Abuja to swear an affidavit backing a lawsuit that could reshape the entire 2027 race before it even starts. The target: President Bola Tinubu himself. The ask: disqualify him from running again. At the center of it all is a single document — an NYSC discharge certificate that Atiku says was submitted to INEC under the name "Tinubu Bola Adekunle," not "Bola Ahmed Tinubu." The suit, which also names the APC and INEC as defendants, leans on Section 137(1)(j) of the Constitution — the clause that bars anyone who has presented a forged certificate to INEC from holding the presidency at all. Atiku isn't stopping there. He's demanding INEC hand over Tinubu's Form CF001 filings from both the 2023 and 2027 elections, saying his earlier request for certified copies went unanswered. And he's framing this as bigger than politics: "Nigerian graduates cannot complete NYSC documentation with one identity and simply ask employers to ignore discrepancies," he said. "The Presidency is not an immunity certificate against constitutional scrutiny." This isn't Atiku's first swing at Tinubu's paperwork. Back in 2023, he tried — and failed — to force Chicago State University to hand over Tinubu's academic records through a US court, a bid that was ultimately withdrawn. Some of the same NYSC documents now back in dispute were actually tendered before the Presidential Election Petitions Court in 2023, where objections from Tinubu's own legal team, along with APC's and INEC's, kept them from being fully resolved. Whether this new case even gets a hearing is its own legal battle — Atiku is also asking the court to decide whether provisions of the Electoral Act 2026 can be used to block him from invoking Section 137(1)(j) at all. For now, the claims are just that — claims. Nothing has been proven in court. But with the case landing squarely in the middle of the run-up to 2027, it's already reshaping the conversation around who gets to be on the ballot next.