Peter Obi has asked President Bola Tinubu how long he wants to keep questions about his past away from Nigerians.
In a statement posted on his X account on Monday 31 August 2026, the NDC presidential candidate said a sitting president asking a foreign court to withhold records of public interest is profoundly embarrassing.
Obi said he prayed for Nigeria on Sunday 30 August. He said he has never sought another citizenship and that his loyalty to the country remains firm. He said he was deeply saddened by the direction the nation is heading. Leadership, he said, needs courage and humility to face history, explain hard questions, and apologise if that is required. He said real authority grows when a leader accepts responsibility instead of trying to shield uncomfortable parts of the past.
The statement comes as Tinubu has joined a United States court case in Washington and asked a federal judge to keep FBI and DEA redactions in place. American records campaigner Aaron Greenspan of PlainSite filed Freedom of Information Act requests in 2022 and 2023 seeking files on a Chicago heroin investigation from the late 1980s and early 1990s. The requests named Tinubu along with Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande and Abiodun Agbele. Greenspan asked for the entire FBI file on Tinubu and FBI Form 302 interview records from 1992 and 1993.
The dispute also covers a 1993 civil forfeiture in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The court ordered the forfeiture of about four hundred and sixty thousand dollars from an account linked to Tinubu after a probe into a Chicago heroin network. US investigators alleged that proceeds from the network went into bank accounts Tinubu owned or controlled. In January 1992 US authorities obtained an order freezing more than one million four hundred thousand dollars in accounts linked to him. Tinubu has denied wrongdoing. His US lawyers say there is no criminal indictment and that if he had been culpable, he would have been charged. In 2023 Nigeria’s Presidential Election Petition Court held that petitioners had not shown he was arrested, arraigned, convicted or sentenced for a crime in the United States.
NN News Media reported that the FBI has submitted 399 disputed drug trafficking records to Judge Beryl Howell for private review and that Nigerians are demanding the hidden files be released. The outlet said citizens argue they have a right to know the full history of the person holding the country’s highest office. It said Atiku Abubakar and his allies have been among the loudest voices calling for disclosure, joined by transparency campaigners. Our correspondent had earlier reported that the records stem from a Chicago area probe and that public pressure grew after agencies asked to keep some material sealed, citing risk to agents, sources and investigative methods.
However, Obi said questions of public interest should not be locked behind a foreign court. He also returned to long-running questions about educational credentials. He said issues around primary and secondary schooling should not stay unresolved or be handled mainly through legal action. Nigerians, he said, deserve clear, credible and verifiable explanations, especially where papers had already been submitted in the past.
He said his deepest worry is the example this sets for more than two hundred million Nigerians, including more than thirty million young people in school. The highest office, he said, should show integrity, accountability, transparency and ethical leadership. An imperfect past is part of being human. What matters is the will to face it with honesty, make amends where needed, and put the nation above personal ambition.
He asked when the political class will accept that personal ambition is short lived while the nation lasts. The presidency is held for a season. The moral standard set by those who hold it can shape generations. Nigeria is greater than any one person, he said, and the integrity of the republic must come before the interest of the individual. He closed by saying a new Nigeria is possible.
