In a video that has gone viral on social media, a Nigerian man living in the United Kingdom has publicly protested against President Bola Tinubu, demanding that he stop hiding and go to the United States to answer questions about his old drug‑related case.
He said Tinubu of Nigeria is a drug baron and the vice president of Nigeria is a terrorist.
The man said Tinubu “does not deserve respect or honor” while thousands of innocent Nigerians continue to be dying and suffering from rising insecurity and violence across the country. He challenged the president to confront the legal issues Americans and Nigerians are seeking to make public.
The protester’s comments touch on a subject that has been debated for years outside Nigeria: in the early 1990s, U.S. authorities froze some of Tinubu’s assets because they believed money in his bank accounts may have come from heroin trafficking. That case was never fully tried in court, but Tinubu agreed to give up about $460,000 to the U.S. government in 1993 as part of a settlement. This has been mentioned in past reporting on the matter.
In recent years, freedom of information requests filed in the United States have forced American law enforcement agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) into court to release documents related to that old investigation.
A U.S. federal judge has repeatedly criticized the FBI and DEA for delaying the release of records about the investigation into Tinubu’s connections to a Chicago drug ring, saying the public has a right to see the files. Those files are supposed to include details of interviews, financial records and other investigation materials from the 1990s.
The legal fight has dragged on for years because the FBI and other agencies initially refused to confirm or deny the existence of records, citing privacy and security concerns. But U.S. judges have ruled that much of the material should be released under America’s Freedom of Information laws.
The Nigerian presidency has dismissed calls to release the documents, saying they contain nothing new and do not prove wrongdoing by Tinubu. Government officials say the reports were already public decades ago and do not change the fact that Tinubu is Nigeria’s elected president.
Despite that, the issue continues to fuel criticism both inside and outside Nigeria. Opponents of Tinubu point to the U.S. case and the ongoing release of FBI and DEA investigation files as reasons the president should be more transparent about his past. The protest in the UK is the latest sign that this controversy resonates with Nigerians abroad as well as at home.
