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President Bola Tinubu has formally asked a United States federal court to block the release of investigative records tied to a decades-old drug trafficking probe, deepening a three-year legal fight over documents that predate his presidency.
Tinubu’s legal team — Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson and Oluwole O. Afolabi — filed a 16-page motion this week urging the court to deny a bid by transparency activist Aaron Greenspan to force full disclosure of the files. The motion argues that earlier partial releases do not eliminate Tinubu’s privacy rights under U.S. law, and asks the judge to uphold the redactions the FBI and DEA have applied so far.
The underlying case
The dispute traces back to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit Greenspan filed in 2023 after submitting a dozen records requests to six federal agencies, including the FBI, the DEA, the CIA and the IRS. The requests sought files on a Chicago-based heroin trafficking investigation from the early 1990s that named Tinubu among several individuals allegedly connected to the ring, along with Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande and Abiodun Agbele.
Central to the case is a 1993 forfeiture in which Tinubu surrendered $460,000 to the U.S. government after authorities linked the funds to narcotics proceeds. He was never criminally charged, and has consistently described the episode as a civil settlement rather than an admission of wrongdoing.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled in April 2025 that the agencies’ blanket refusals to confirm or deny the existence of records — known as Glomar responses — were improper and had to be lifted. Since then, the FBI and DEA have repeatedly sought extensions, prompting Howell to warn in February that she had run out of patience with the delays.
Earlier this month, the FBI asked the court for permission to explain privately, in a sealed filing, why some material should stay withheld, citing risks to investigative techniques and to individuals named in the files. Howell granted that request and set a deadline of August 28 for the FBI, DEA, Department of Justice and Tinubu’s legal team to file their final opposition to public release — the filing Tinubu’s lawyers submitted this week.
Competing narratives
The case has drawn heightened attention in Nigeria partly because of Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C., a U.S. lobbying and law firm that has been posting frequent updates on the litigation. Public filings show the firm was retained in March 2026 by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to work on his reputational standing in the United States. The firm has characterized the FBI’s request for private review as evidence Tinubu may have cooperated with investigators against other suspects in the 1990s — a claim that has not been confirmed by any court filing or agency statement.
The presidency has pushed back on the broader narrative. Bayo Onanuga, Tinubu’s special adviser on information and strategy, has said government lawyers are reviewing the litigation but that the records are unlikely to contain any new revelations. Tinubu’s legal team has separately argued in filings that he was never arrested, indicted or convicted of a drug offense in the United States.
What happens next
No hearing date has been announced. Judge Howell must now weigh the government’s and Tinubu’s arguments for continued withholding against Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment compelling full release. Given the case’s history of missed deadlines, further extensions remain possible, though Howell has signaled she is unlikely to grant many more.
