Presidency dismisses report on US court order for FBI, drug agency to release Tinubu’s file

The Presidency has dismissed a recent U.S. court ruling ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to release investigative records related to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, insisting that the matter offers no new revelations.

In a brief response on Sunday via his verified X (formerly Twitter) handle, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga (@aonanuga1956), dismissed the media buzz surrounding the development.

He stated that the documents in question have long been public and contain no indictment of the Nigerian leader.

“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 wrote.

Onanuga also noted that the president’s legal team is reviewing the implications of the U.S. court ruling.

The reaction comes in the wake of widespread media coverage of a judgment delivered last Tuesday by Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The judge ordered the FBI and DEA to release documents connected to a 1990s drug trafficking investigation that allegedly involved President Tinubu and others.

According to media reports, Judge Howell rejected the agencies’ use of the so-called “Glomar response”—a legal provision allowing them to neither confirm nor deny the existence of certain records.

The court found the justification for the non-disclosure lacking in merit.

“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.

The lawsuit prompting the release order was filed in June 2023 by Aaron Greenspan, a U.S. transparency advocate and founder of PlainSite.org.

Greenspan had submitted 12 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking details of an alleged heroin trafficking network.

Despite the renewed interest generated by the court’s decision, the Presidency maintains that the issue is not new and that the documents contain no incriminating material against President Tinubu.

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