A United States District Court in Washington, D.C., has directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to make public records concerning President Bola Tinubu.
Judge Beryl Howell issued the order on Tuesday in response to a motion filed by Aaron Greenspan, an American citizen seeking a review of a previous ruling.
In her decision, Howell dismissed the agencies’ justification for withholding the information, stating that shielding such documents from the public “is neither logical nor plausible.”
Greenspan alleged that the agencies violated the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by failing to produce documents regarding alleged federal probes into both President Tinubu and Abiodun Agbele within the legally mandated timeframe.
In 1993, Tinubu forfeited $460,000 to the U.S. government after officials linked the funds to proceeds from narcotics-related activities.
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The issue resurfaced during proceedings at Nigeria’s Presidential Election Petition Court, where opposition candidates Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi cited the forfeiture in challenging Tinubu’s eligibility for office. The court ultimately dismissed the petitions and upheld his election.
Judge Howell’s latest ruling partially supports Greenspan’s claims, particularly concerning the agencies’ reliance on what’s known as a “Glomar response”—a refusal to confirm or deny the existence of records.
According to the judge, the FBI and DEA failed to demonstrate that their use of the Glomar principle was appropriate in this case.
She wrote, “the claim that the Glomar responses were necessary to protect this information from public disclosure is at this point neither logical nor plausible,” noting that Tinubu had already been publicly identified as a subject in investigations by both agencies.
Further explaining the legal framework, Howell stated that a FOIA requester can challenge a Glomar response either by disputing the claim that disclosure would cause identifiable harm, or by proving that the agency has already officially acknowledged the information in question.
In this instance, Greenspan made both arguments. He contended that: “The plaintiffs’ argument that (1) DEA has officially confirmed investigations of Agbele’s involvement in the drug trafficking ring, (2) the FBI and DEA have both officially confirmed investigations of Tinubu relating to the drug trafficking ring, (3) any privacy interests implicated by the FOIA requests to the FBI and DEA for records about Tinubu are overcome by the public interest in release of such information, and (4) the CIA has officially acknowledged records responsive to plaintiff’s FOIA request about Tinubu.”
