ABUJA — President Bola Tinubu has intervened in a long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case in the United States, seeking to delay or limit the public release of historical law-enforcement records relating to investigations from the 1990s.
The records, held by agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of Justice, are at the centre of a legal battle initiated by American transparency advocate Aaron Greenspan.
Greenspan filed the FOIA lawsuit seeking access to what he described as unredacted records connected to historical investigations conducted in Chicago in the early 1990s.
The dispute has drawn particular attention because some of the records relate to a 1993 civil forfeiture proceeding involving funds in a bank account associated with Tinubu.
In earlier proceedings, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell reportedly rejected the government’s blanket refusal to disclose the records, finding that withholding the materials in their entirety was not adequately justified and directing the agencies toward greater disclosure.
Tinubu has now entered the case through his legal representatives, who are opposing immediate and unrestricted public release of the documents.
According to arguments presented by his legal team, the records contain sensitive personal information and should remain protected on privacy grounds. His lawyers have also argued that releasing the documents could have implications for political affairs outside the United States.
Tinubu’s representatives have additionally sought more time to review the records and coordinate with U.S. authorities over the processing of potentially sensitive material before any wider disclosure.
The intervention has added a new dimension to the FOIA dispute, placing questions of government transparency alongside privacy and political considerations.
The Nigerian presidency has previously maintained that reviews of the decades-old allegations did not result in a direct criminal indictment or a finding of guilt against Tinubu.
The latest development, however, means that the legal battle over the extent to which the historical U.S. records should be made public remains ongoing.
