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247ureports
ABUJA, September 6, 2026 — Aviation and Aerospace Development Minister Festus Keyamo has dismissed the latest allegations from a US lobbying firm pursuing President Bola Tinubu’s alleged FBI and DEA drug-trafficking records, calling the matter a “storm in a teacup” that would lead to “a journey to nowhere.”
Keyamo’s comment, posted on X on Saturday, was a direct response to a lengthy statement by Von Batten-Montague-York, the Washington-based advisory firm at the center of an ongoing US court battle over the records. The firm had accused the Nigerian Presidency of a “planned and coordinated” campaign to disrupt its work, naming Keyamo alongside presidential advisers Bayo Onanuga and Sunday Dare.
“Storm in a teacup; journey to nowhere,” Keyamo wrote.
Von Batten-Montague-York, led by Managing Partner Dr. Karl Von Batten, responded within hours, accusing the Nigerian government of running “like a narco state” and protecting what it called Tinubu’s “alleged drug-dealing” past.
“The Nigerian Presidency is acting like a narco state, using the levers of the state to protect its alleged drug-dealing President, Bola Tinubu, whom the FBI alleges was part of a criminal organization that smuggled heroin from Nigeria into the United States during the 1980s and 1990s,” the firm said in a post on X.
The firm said the exchange would be folded into its next briefing to the Trump administration and the US Congress, titled “Senior Nigerian Government Officials Rushing to Protect Their Alleged Drug-Trafficker President.” It also questioned why “a cabinet-level Nigerian Minister” would bother responding publicly if the matter were as insignificant as Keyamo suggested.
Background
The exchange is the latest flashpoint in a monthslong dispute tied to Aaron Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. President, et al., a Freedom of Information Act case pending before Judge Beryl Howell in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The suit seeks the release of FBI and DEA records concerning decades-old drug-trafficking allegations against Tinubu, including a since-closed civil forfeiture case from the early 1990s.
Von Batten-Montague-York, which public FARA filings show is engaged by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, has spent weeks publicizing developments in the case. The firm said Saturday it is preparing a supplemental evidentiary filing for the court, arguing Tinubu cannot claim privacy over the records while his own officials publicly discuss the matter, and a separate referral asking the FBI to review the officials’ conduct as potential “transnational repression.”
Keyamo’s “storm in a teacup” phrase echoes language he has used before — he applied the same description to opposition coalition talk ahead of the 2027 election — and follows similar public pushback in recent weeks from Onanuga and Dare, both of whom have described the case as a routine civil records dispute rather than evidence of wrongdoing.
What’s Still Unresolved
Von Batten’s claim that “the FBI alleges” Tinubu was part of a criminal heroin-smuggling organization is the firm’s own characterization. The underlying FBI and DEA records remain sealed or redacted, and the FOIA suit exists specifically to force their disclosure — meaning their contents, and any current FBI position on them, are not yet a matter of public record. Neither the FBI nor the Nigerian Presidency has issued a statement confirming or denying the firm’s characterization.
Tinubu’s office had not issued a formal response to Saturday’s exchange as of this report.
