Members of Congress and senior Hill staff came back to Washington and a Republican lobbying shop said it moved at once. Von Batten Montague York LC said it spent the day briefing friends on Capitol Hill about a long running Freedom of Information fight over decades old United States records that name Nigerian President Bola Tinubu in a heroin trafficking inquiry from the 1980s and 1990s.
The firm said the briefings were not about Nigerian party politics. It told lawmakers the files raise live questions for Washington on national security, police cooperation, intelligence sharing, the fight against narcotics, and whether a major West African partner can still be trusted.
The same statement asked a blunt policy question as the United States reviews its ties across Africa. Is Tinubu a strategic asset or a growing national security risk.
The campaign sits on a 1993 civil forfeiture case in Illinois, not a criminal conviction. United States investigators in the late 1980s and early 1990s looked at a Chicago linked heroin network. Government papers from that era alleged that drug proceeds moved into United States bank accounts owned or controlled by Tinubu. Other names in those papers included Adegboyega Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele. In 1993 a federal court ordered the forfeiture of about 460000 dollars from an account in Tinubu’s name, treating the money as narcotics proceeds or funds tied to money laundering. Tinubu was not charged with a crime and has long described the outcome as a civil settlement.
Years later American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan filed Freedom of Information requests seeking the wider investigative file, including FBI records and 1992 to 1993 interview notes. Several agencies first refused even to confirm that records existed. In 2025 Judge Beryl Howell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected that blanket stance for parts of the request and ordered the FBI and DEA to search and process records that are not legally exempt. The fight over what can be released is still in court.
Von Batten Montague York is a Washington policy and lobbying firm. Public filings show it was hired in 2026 by former Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar on a reported 1.2 million dollar yearly contract to raise his standing in the United States. The firm has already circulated more than 60 pages of Justice Department papers and a chronology of the 1993 case to Trump administration officials, members of Congress, and senior staff. It has also publicized later FBI court language saying Tinubu was a subject of a criminal investigation in the early 1990s.
For Washington, the controversy could therefore have implications beyond Nigerian domestic politics. Any questions surrounding the past of a sitting president of one of Africa’s most influential countries could affect discussions involving intelligence cooperation, drug enforcement, security partnerships and diplomatic trust.
Von Batten Montague York is now seeking to keep the issue in front of lawmakers and congressional staff as the FOIA case continues.
The firm’s latest move also adds another layer to its wider campaign over Tinubu. In an earlier statement, it claimed that efforts to secure U.S. political support for Tinubu and arrange a meeting with Trump had failed after a major lobbying campaign.
The latest statement suggests the lobbying firm intends to continue pressing the issue in Washington rather than limiting the dispute to public statements on social media.
The firm said its message to lawmakers was that the allegations deserve attention because of their possible implications for U.S. national security and the credibility of Nigeria as a strategic American partner in West Africa.
As the fight moves further into Washington, the central question being raised by the lobbying campaign is whether the United States should continue treating Tinubu as an important strategic partner or begin viewing the controversy surrounding him as a potential security and credibility problem.
The dispute is now placing renewed attention on the historical U.S. records, the FOIA case and the broader relationship between Washington and Abuja.
