The Nigerian Presidency on Sunday reacted to a ruling by a United States judge ordering the release of reports connected with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, saying there was nothing new to be revealed.
The US Court for the District of Columbia had, in an April 8, 2025 judgment, directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to release records of their investigations of President Tinubu’s involvement in alleged drug trafficking.
The district judge, Beryl Howell, ordered that the FBI and DEA “must search for and process non-exempt records responsive to the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests directed to these agencies”.
The judge ruled that the evasive “Glomar responses” previously issued in response to the FOIA requests on the matter must be lifted. Glomar responses are given by government agencies to neither confirm nor deny the existence of a particular information requested.
While the order has sparked heated conversations among Nigerians, the Presidency said there is nothing to it.
“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,” presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“The reports did not indict the Nigerian leader. The lawyers are examining the ruling,” he said.
The information per se has to do, among others, with an allegation that Tinubu, in 1993, forfeited $460,000 to the US Government after authorities linked the funds to proceeds of narcotics trafficking.
Back in 2022 and 2023, an American and founder of PlainSite, Aaron Greenspan, sought investigative records about Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Abiodun Agbele who were allegedly associated with a drug ring.
Greenspan therefore filed 12 FOIA requests with six different US Federal Government agencies including the FBI and the DEA to request the criminal investigation information of the Chicago heroin ring that operated in the early 1990s.
Other agencies that Greenspan wrote to are the United States Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Executive Office of United States Attorneys (EOUSA).
Five of the agencies, according to the court document, issued Glomar responses to Greenspan’s FOIA requests. The agencies stated that they could neither nor confirm the requested records.
Dissatisfied, Greenspan subsequently filed a lawsuit to challenge the agencies’ response to the FOIA requests.
