CSU Certificate Saga: How US law protects Tinubu’s academic record privacy, APC chieftain explains

A former spokesman for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s campaign in the South-East, Dr. Josef Onoh has disclosed that the United States of America (USA) privacy law works.

He revealed that the US law, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), protects Tinubu from releasing his academic records to the flagbearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, The Nigerian Guardian reported.

Atiku had gone to court asking for the authorities of the Chicago State University (CSU) to release the academic records of Tinubu to him which the president’s legal representatives objected to except for the release of Tinubu’s results alone without other details of his academic performance.

Tinubu's objection has been causing some uproar in the opposition campaigns, where Atiku and his followers allege that Tinubu is hiding some important information.

But Onoh in a statement on Wednesday, September 27, said that ignorance of the laws of the USA was the main cause of the dissents among the opposing Nigeria political class.

Onoh opined thus: “Also, the release of his records to Atiku might contain personal informations that might go against The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), also commonly known as the Buckley Amendment, which became law in November 1974 in the US to protect the privacy of personally identifiable information in a student’s education record.

“FERPA serves a two-fold purpose: (1) to grant parents (and students 18 or older) access to information in the student’s education record, and (2) to protect that information from disclosure to third parties without consent.

“The President like many other students that were educated in the US is only exercising his rights as protected by FERPA. Which is different from the Nigerian educational system.”