Monday, April 14, 2025 - The Presidency has responded to a United States court ruling that ordered American law enforcement agencies to release confidential information relating to President Bola Tinubu, generated during a purported federal investigation in the 1990s.
The order was handed down by Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S.
District Court for the District of Columbia, who ruled that the FBI and DEA
must release the documents, stating that the continued secrecy was “neither
logical nor plausible.”
Premium Times reported that the ruling followed a lawsuit
filed in June 2023 by U.S. citizen Aaron Greenspan, under the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA). Greenspan sued multiple agencies, including the
Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA), FBI, DEA, IRS, Department of
State, and later, the CIA. He alleged that these agencies failed to respond
adequately to 12 FOIA requests he submitted between 2022 and 2023, seeking
documents on President Tinubu and others linked to a heroin trafficking network
in Chicago during the 1990s.
The agencies responded with “Glomar” denials—refusals to
confirm or deny whether such records exist.
Greenspan contested those responses and later filed an
emergency motion in October 2023, urging a speedy release of the records ahead
of a Supreme Court hearing in Nigeria challenging Tinubu’s election. That
motion was denied. Tinubu subsequently moved to intervene in the suit, citing
privacy concerns over the release of his tax and law enforcement records.
Despite this, Judge Howell found that the Glomar responses by the FBI and DEA
were improper, given that both agencies had already officially acknowledged
investigations involving Tinubu.
The judge wrote that the arguments for withholding the
documents had failed under FOIA’s standards, and that “the claim that the
Glomar responses were necessary to protect this information from public
disclosure is at this point neither logical nor plausible.” The court, however,
sustained the CIA’s Glomar response, stating that Greenspan failed to show the
agency had ever officially acknowledged the existence or nonexistence of
relevant records.”
Greenspan’s FOIA requests targeted investigative records
concerning Bola Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and
Abiodun Agbele—all individuals linked in U.S. law enforcement records to a
distribution network operating in the early 1990s.
Reacting to
the latest court decision, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on
Information and Strategy, said there was nothing new to be revealed in the
documents ordered for release. “There is nothing new to be revealed. The report
by Agent Moss of the FBI and the DEA report have been in the public space for
more than 30 years. The reports did not indict the Nigerian leader. The lawyers
are examining the ruling,” he stated.
Onanuga
added that the Presidency had been contacted by journalists seeking a response,
and reiterated that the documents in question had long been part of the public
record.
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