The Presidency has downplayed the significance of a recent U.S. court ruling ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to release documents linked to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
Reacting to the ruling, Bayo Onanuga, Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, said the reports in question were decades old and contain nothing new.
“Journalists have sought the Presidency’s reaction to the ruling last Tuesday by a Washington DC judge ordering the US FBI and DEA to release reports connected with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu,” Onanuga posted on X on Sunday, April 13.
He stated, “Our response is as follows. There is nothing new to be revealed. The report by Agent Moss of the FBI and the DEA report have been in the public space for more than 30 years. The reports did not indict the Nigerian leader.”
Onanuga added that President Tinubu’s legal team is reviewing the development. “The lawyers are examining the ruling,” he said.
READ ALSO: U.S. Judge Orders FBI, DEA to Release Records on Tinubu’s Alleged Drug Probe
A U.S. federal judge ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to release investigative records relating to Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in connection with a purported narcotics trafficking investigation from the 1990s.
District Court for the District of Columbia rejected attempts by the FBI and DEA to withhold the records under the “Glomar response” — a policy that allows agencies to neither confirm nor deny the existence of requested information.
“The claim that the Glomar responses were necessary to protect this information from public disclosure is at this point neither logical nor plausible,” Judge Howell ruled, stating that the agencies failed to meet the legal standards under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The case was filed by American transparency advocate Aaron Greenspan, founder of PlainSite.org, who had submitted a series of FOIA requests in 2023 to various U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
These requests sought records tied to a heroin trafficking network allegedly involving Tinubu and others, including Mueez Akande, Abiodun Agbele, and Lee Andrew Edwards.