Aaron Greenspan, founder of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), on Friday, filed an emergency motion at the District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington DC, seeking the immediate release of documents on President Bola Tinubu by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Mr Greenspan is also the founder of Plainsite.org, which tracks legal cases against big corporations in the U.S.
In the emergency motion, Greenspan is seeking a hearing, even by Zoom, to compel the FBI to release urgently the documents it promised to release at the end of October.
His desperation, as stated in the motion in Case No. 1:23-cv-01816-BAH followed the announcement by Nigeria’s Supreme Court to hear Atiku and Peter Obi’s appeals on Monday 23 October.
Greenspan claimed in the affidavit that the plaintiffs in the case, meaning Atiku and Obi, have 60 days to appeal the judgment by the Court of Appeal, delivered on 6 September.
It was learnt that the appellants do not have such luxury of time. The 60 days include the filing time and the hearing of the case. Constitutionality, the Supreme Court must deliver judgment on or before 4 November, 2023.
Greenspan also claimed that the Supreme Court decision to hear the case on 23 October was sudden.
“The sudden advance in timing appears intended to front-run the release of responsive FOIA documents from the defendants in this action and especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those documents would likely be directly relevant to the foreign proceedings in Nigeria”, the motion claimed.
NN News Media recall that Greenspan filed the request in collaboration with investigation journalist David Hundeyin.
In the 2500 documents are expected to provide more information about Tinubu’s time in the United States, including when he entered the country, under what name he entered, and his activities while there. The documents are also expected to shed light on Tinubu’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking in the 1990s.
