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Abuja/Washington — September 14, 2026

A Punch newspaper report detailing a planned U.S.-Nigeria mining cooperation agreement, set to be signed on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), has been taken offline, with the original article’s URL now returning a “404 — Page not found” error. The removal was flagged by Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C. (VBMY), the Washington-based lobbying firm that has spent recent months publicly pressing President Bola Tinubu over unreleased FBI and DEA records tied to a 1990s U.S. drug investigation.

The original Punch story, published September 13, 2026, and still accessible via cached and syndicated copies, reported that Nigeria and the United States planned to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on mining cooperation on the sidelines of the UNGA in New York. According to a statement issued at the time by Lara Owoeye-Wise, Special Assistant on Media to the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, the agreement followed a meeting in Abuja between Minister Dele Alake and the U.S. Embassy’s Chargé d’Affaires, Keith Heffern — itself a follow-up to an earlier high-level engagement in Washington, D.C., where Alake had met White House officials including David Copley, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Global Supply Chain at the National Security Council. The reported discussions centered on expanding U.S.-Nigeria cooperation across the critical minerals value chain, including exploration, processing, and refining.

VBMY’s renewed claims

In a follow-up post on X on Monday, VBMY said the Trump administration was “currently reviewing” the proposed signing of the agreement — a claim that could not be independently corroborated by other sources as of this writing. The firm said it believed the episode “could bring into question the integrity of the United States and President Trump.”

The firm reiterated claims it had raised a day earlier: that individuals associated with the Nigerian Presidency had been privately boasting they had “settled (paid-off) the Americans,” that Tinubu’s FBI records concerning heroin-trafficking allegations would not be released, and that a Tinubu-Trump meeting at the UNGA would go ahead as a result. VBMY again explicitly stated it had “not independently verified” these statements and did not present them as fact.

The firm clarified its position on the underlying minerals deal itself, stating: “We support a U.S.-Nigeria minerals agreement that advances American interests.” Its stated concern, it said, was narrower — the timing and appearance of a signing at the UNGA while unverified claims about the FBI/DEA records were in circulation and the related federal litigation remained unresolved. “A legitimate economic agreement should not be allowed to create the appearance that economic concessions are connected to access to President Trump or the disposition of U.S. law-enforcement records,” the firm said.

VBMY, which has been reported to be linked to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Tinubu’s 2023 election rival, has waged a sustained public pressure campaign over the FBI/DEA records dispute — a genuine, ongoing U.S. federal court matter stemming from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by transparency activist Aaron Greenspan. A federal judge ordered the FBI and DEA in April 2026 to begin processing the records for release; the agencies have since sought extensions. The Nigerian Presidency has consistently dismissed VBMY’s broader allegations — including a separate, previously reported claim that a Tinubu-linked APC figure offered the firm $3 million — as the position of a “commercial lobbyist” rather than credible intelligence, and has challenged the firm to produce named sources and documentary evidence.

Neither the Nigerian Presidency nor Punch had issued a public explanation for the article’s removal as of this writing. It remains unclear whether the deletion was linked to editorial reasons, a request from Nigerian officials, or another cause entirely.