The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has told a United States federal court that Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the subject of a criminal investigation relating to drug trafficking in the early 1990s.
The disclosure was contained in a sworn declaration submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on August 28, 2026, in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case involving American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan.
In the declaration, an FBI official serving as Acting Section Chief of the Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) stated that the records sought by Greenspan were “compiled in furtherance of the FBI’s investigation of multiple individuals for drug trafficking crimes.”
The FBI further stated that “the court has already determined that an official acknowledgement had been made of an investigation of Bola Tinubu.”
The declaration was published by Von Batten-Montague-York, a Washington-based lobbying firm hired by former Nigerian Vice-President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
The firm posted portions of the document on X, saying it had received a “huge amount of records” which it was “carefully going through and redacting where we see fit.”
The firm said the FBI’s declaration contradicted claims that Tinubu was never criminally investigated and that the US government was only withholding the records to protect his privacy.
“The FBI states under oath that the court has already determined that a criminal investigation of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu was officially acknowledged,” the firm said.
The latest development is linked to a long-running legal battle arising from FOIA requests filed by Greenspan between 2022 and 2023.
Greenspan sought records from six US federal agencies concerning a Chicago heroin trafficking investigation that operated in the early 1990s.
The FOIA requests named four individuals, including Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Adegboyega Akande and Abiodun Agbele.
One of the requests, identified as Request Number 1588244-000, sought “the entire FBI file for Bola Ahmed Tinubu, DOB 3/29/1952, President-Elect of Nigeria as of February 2023.”
A second request, numbered 1593615-000, sought “FBI 302 interviews with Bola Tinubu from FBI Case No. 245-IP-71386-UUUUUU during the timeframe 1992-1993.”
FBI Form 302 records generally contain summaries prepared by agents of interviews conducted during federal investigations.
The latest declaration follows an April 2025 ruling by US District Judge Beryl Howell, who ordered the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to lift their “Glomar” responses concerning records connected to the Tinubu investigation.
A Glomar response permits a government agency to refuse to confirm or deny the existence of records where acknowledging their existence could itself reveal information protected under applicable law.
Judge Howell ruled that the FBI and DEA had failed to establish sufficient privacy grounds to conceal the fact that Tinubu had been the subject of an investigation.
The judge consequently ordered the agencies to process records that were not exempt from disclosure.
However, the ruling did not establish that Tinubu committed a drug-trafficking offence, nor did it constitute a criminal conviction or judicial finding of guilt against him.
The FBI is still withholding portions of the records under several FOIA exemptions, including Exemptions 6, 7(C), 7(D), 7(E) and 7(F).
The exemptions cover personal privacy, confidential sources, law-enforcement techniques and information that could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of individuals.
The FBI said disclosure of some of the withheld information could reveal law-enforcement techniques and procedures.
The agency also said it could not disclose the full basis for its reliance on Exemptions 7(E) and 7(F) on the public record because of the potential consequences of releasing the information.
The development follows a four-page motion filed by the FBI on August 20, 2026, asking the court for permission to submit confidential declarations under seal and privately explain the basis for withholding portions of the records.
The motion was filed in the case of Aaron Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, et al., Civil Action No. 23-1816 (BAH), before Judge Howell.
Tinubu, through his lawyers Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson and Oluwole O. Afolabi, has opposed further disclosure of the records.
His legal team has asked the court to prevent additional release of the documents, arguing that disclosure would violate the President’s privacy rights.
The lawyers have argued that FOIA is designed to expose the activities of government agencies rather than provide a mechanism for extracting private information about individuals contained in government archives.
The controversy has taken on a significant political dimension in Nigeria, particularly with political activities intensifying ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
The involvement of Von Batten-Montague-York, which has been hired by Atiku Abubakar, has also placed the latest disclosure at the centre of an emerging political dispute over Tinubu’s past and the extent to which records from the US investigation should be made public.
The firm has presented the FBI declaration as evidence that an investigation involving Tinubu was formally acknowledged, while the President’s legal team is seeking to restrict further disclosure of records on privacy grounds.
The FBI’s declaration, however, does not by itself establish that Tinubu trafficked heroin or committed a drug-trafficking crime.
Neither the April 2025 court ruling nor the August 28, 2026 declaration constitutes a conviction or judicial determination that Tinubu committed a drug-trafficking offence.
The immediate legal dispute remains centred on the release of government records under the US Freedom of Information Act and whether portions of those records can continue to be withheld under statutory exemptions.