“There’s Nothing New to Reveal,” Presidency Says as U.S. Court Orders FBI to Release Tinubu Drug Investigation Records
Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu on Information and Strategy, has dismissed the recent court ruling ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to release information on investigations involving Tinubu.
Neusroom learnt that on Tuesday, Justice Beryl Howell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the U.S. federal agencies to release records gathered during investigations into Bola Tinubu in the 1990s.
During the 2023 presidential campaign season in Nigeria, discussions around Tinubu’s past—particularly allegations of drug dealing, money laundering, and certificate forgery while living in the United States—were a heated topic of public discourse.
At that time, Aaron Greenspan, an American, filed a suit against the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), seeking records of criminal investigations conducted against Tinubu and three others: Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Abiodun Agbele.
On October 20, 2023, Greenspan filed an emergency suit seeking a hearing to compel the U.S. agencies to immediately produce records responsive to his FOIA requests. This coincided with the Nigerian Supreme Court’s scheduled hearing of election petitions challenging Tinubu’s emergence as the winner of the February 25 presidential election. However, the emergency suit was denied for failing to “satisfy any of the requirements for emergency injunctive relief.”
After one year and four months, Judge Howell ruled partly in favor of Mr. Greenspan in the U.S. case.
In his ruling, Howell established that a FOIA requester (Greenspan) may challenge the propriety of an agency’s Glomar response in two ways: first, by “challeng[ing] the agency’s assertion that confirming or denying the existence of any records would result in a cognizable harm under a FOIA exemption,” and second, by showing that the agency “has ‘officially acknowledged otherwise exempt information through prior disclosure,’” meaning the agency “has waived its right to claim an exemption with respect to that information.”
However, Onanuga dismissed any potential damage from the ruling, claiming that the records have been in the public domain for more than three decades.
“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 said on X.
