One of President Bola Tinubu's lawyers, Wole Afolabi has clarified why they told the court under a Ms Nancy Maldonado of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago that "severe and irreparable harm will be done to Tinubu if his Chicago State University (CSU) records were released.
In an interview with TVC Afolabi said "That was lawyers language. Any lawyer that you speak to who is a practitioner will tell you that when you approach the court of law to get an interlocutory release, essentially one of the things that you have to satisfy the court is you have to tell the court that 'your honor if you go ahead and allow this documents to be released now, irreparable harm would have been done'. What does that mean in everyday language? It means that once the genie is out of the bottle you can't put it back".
Speaking further, Afolabi said "We contested that based on the Federal Educational Rights And Privacy Act, the president is entitled to privacy of his records unless he elects to release them. So Judge Gilbert, having ordered that the documents be released within 48 hours, we were just a few hours away from reaching the time frame, so we went to Judge Maldonado and said 'Your honor put a stop to the execution of this order because if you don't, and these records are released then they would be no nothing for you to review anymore'.
Lastly, he said "That was all we meant by that, not irreparable harm as in being shot or being killed. It is a legal term, and if you are asking for a stay of order you have to demonstrate that if this order is not stayed then your honor they will he nothing for you to review, and the judge listened to us and stayed that order. That was the context in which it was used"