President Bola Tinubu has given the United States District Court for the District of Columbia four reasons why his unredacted records held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) should not be made public.
In filings submitted by his lawyers and published on Saturday, Tinubu argued that the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Privacy Act prohibit the disclosure of the records. He also maintained that there was no legitimate public interest requiring their release.
The President further argued that there was no competing public interest to balance against his privacy rights and accused the plaintiff of having ulterior motives for seeking documents bearing his name.
Tinubu’s legal team comprises Christopher Carmichael, Victor Henderson and Oluwole Afolabi.
The submission was made in response to a request by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan, who is seeking the release of the records under the US Freedom of Information Act.
Opposition parties in Nigeria have opposed Tinubu’s position, arguing that Nigerians have a right to know about the President’s past.
The controversy
Questions surrounding Tinubu’s history with US law-enforcement agencies became prominent during the build-up to the February 25, 2023 presidential election, following the emergence of documents relating to a 1993 civil forfeiture case in the United States.
A US District Court in Illinois ordered the forfeiture of $460,000 held in an account linked to Tinubu after US authorities alleged that the money represented proceeds of narcotics trafficking or was connected to prohibited financial transactions.
The All Progressives Congress, however, argued during the presidential election petition proceedings that the case was a civil forfeiture matter and did not amount to a criminal conviction.
The Labour Party and its presidential candidate at the time, Peter Obi, argued that the forfeiture constituted a disqualifying conviction under the Nigerian Constitution.
However, in September 2023, the Presidential Election Petition Court ruled that the petitioners had failed to establish that Tinubu had been arrested, arraigned, convicted or sentenced in a criminal case in the United States.
Since then, opposition parties and other interested parties have continued efforts to obtain official information about Tinubu from US authorities.
Tinubu’s reasons for opposing disclosure
Greenspan argued that his request involved the “sitting President of Nigeria” and a country of more than 230 million people whose lives are directly affected by Tinubu’s decisions.
Tinubu’s lawyers, however, urged the US District Court to reject the request, arguing that it amounted to an attempt to obtain private information for political purposes in Nigeria.
The legal team said FOIA was designed to promote transparency about government activities and rejected the argument that Nigerians’ interest in Tinubu’s background amounted to the kind of public interest recognised under US law.
The lawyers also dismissed the argument that the records were relevant to assessing Tinubu’s fitness for office.
They argued that “the asserted ‘public interest in Tinubu’s own fitness for office’ is not an interest FOIA recognises or one that needs to be balanced.”
The President’s lawyers further maintained that the requested records were protected by privacy provisions under both FOIA and the US Privacy Act.
“The redacted information sought by the plaintiff is exempt from disclosure,” they argued, citing Exemption 7(C), which protects personal information contained in law-enforcement records.
Relying on a 1989 US Supreme Court ruling, Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the lawyers argued that FOIA was intended to allow the public to understand “what the government is up to,” rather than provide access to information about private individuals.
They maintained that Greenspan was seeking the disclosure of information about private citizens contained in government files, which they said revealed little or nothing about the conduct of government agencies.
‘Records are being sought for Nigerian politics’
Tinubu’s lawyers also challenged what they described as the political motivation behind Greenspan’s request.
According to the legal team, Greenspan’s filings showed that his primary objective was to obtain documents containing Tinubu’s name.
“All of plaintiff’s other critiques should be viewed in the context of plaintiff’s overarching goal,” the lawyers stated.
They argued that Greenspan’s filings “overwhelmingly demonstrate that his singular focus is obtaining documents with intervenor’s ‘name on them.’”
The lawyers urged the court not to allow FOIA to become a mechanism for obtaining private information about an individual merely because that person holds political office.
They also rejected suggestions that the requested records could reveal a secret prosecution or an agreement by US authorities not to prosecute Tinubu.
According to the legal team, such claims were speculative and unsupported by evidence.
“Unsubstantiated allegations are easy to assert in filings, but insufficient to justify a request for information about an individual,” the lawyers argued.
They further maintained that Greenspan had failed to provide evidence showing that any alleged government wrongdoing had occurred, as required under US case law.
“Plaintiff has not carried his burden to obtain law enforcement records that mention or identify a private individual,” they stated.
Tinubu asks court to maintain withholding
The President’s lawyers also disputed Greenspan’s argument that Tinubu’s privacy interests had been weakened because some information about the historical investigation had already entered the public domain.
Greenspan had argued that the general nature of the investigation had been publicly known since 1993.
Tinubu’s lawyers countered that the 1993 forfeiture proceedings, including an affidavit filed in the case, did not reveal the details or outcome of any possible criminal investigation involving the President.
They maintained that even when parts of an investigation have previously appeared in public records, individuals may retain privacy interests in information that has not been publicly disclosed.
The legal team therefore asked the court to reject Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment and permit the FBI and DEA to continue redacting or withholding portions of the records.
Among the documents sought are the “entire FBI file” on Tinubu and FBI Form 302 interview records involving him between 1992 and 1993.
In April 2025, US District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the FBI and DEA to lift their “Glomar” responses, through which the agencies had previously declined to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records. She directed the agencies to process the requested records subject to applicable exemptions.
The FBI subsequently sought to keep portions of the records from public disclosure, citing exemptions relating to law-enforcement information, privacy, investigative techniques and the safety of individuals.
The ongoing FOIA case concerns access to US government records. It does not, by itself, constitute a criminal prosecution or establish that Tinubu committed a drug-trafficking offence.
Nigerians deserve to know the truth — ADC, NDC
Reacting to the development, the African Democratic Congress and the Nigeria Democratic Congress described Tinubu’s opposition to the release of the records as suspicious.
ADC spokesperson Bolaji Abdullahi, in an interview with a correspondent on Saturday, urged the President to allow the records to be released in order to clear his name.
“Why is the President opposing the release of his past records? That is suspicious. The President should allow them (records) to be released to clear himself. The President should come out clean. He should be the one calling for the records to be released if he has nothing to hide because this is not good for him and the image of the country,” he said.
Similarly, NDC National Publicity Secretary Osa Director said Nigerians deserved to know the truth and called on Tinubu to allow the release of his records held by US agencies.
Speaking to Sunday PUNCH on Saturday, Director rejected the argument that the records were being sought primarily for political purposes.
He said, “When a man commits an offence and he says, please, don’t blame me because it is the devil, does that mean he should not face the consequence of his action because it is the devil? That is the question the President should answer.”
