A Washington policy firm says the FBI and DEA filed new papers in a US court late Friday that change the public picture of the long running drug trafficking records fight around Nigerian President Bola Tinubu. The firm says an FBI search tied to Tinubu turned up 399 pages of material. That figure, it argues, ends years of guesswork over whether serious law enforcement files exist at all.
The case sits before Judge Beryl Howell in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. It began as a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by American requester Aaron Greenspan. He asked agencies for historical files on Tinubu and on a late 1980s to early 1990s Chicago heroin investigation. The FBI later told the court it had hand delivered sealed private declarations on 28 August 2026 so the judge could review sensitive material without placing it on the public docket.
The firm says those responsive pages are not a thin civil money file. It lists lab tests for heroin residue, controlled buys by a cooperating witness, confidential informants, federal grand jury work, prosecutor reports and meetings, surveillance, undercover work, money seizures, bank account seizure warrants, IRS criminal investigation material, and contact with investigators in other countries.
That list matters because Tinubu and his lawyers have long framed the 1993 Chicago matter as a civil forfeiture over bank funds, not a live criminal case against him. About 460000 dollars linked to accounts in his name was forfeited to the US government. He was not charged with a crime. He has denied wrongdoing. His legal team has now asked the court to keep unredacted files private, citing US privacy law and arguing that release would not serve a proper public interest under American records rules. The firm says that stance itself shows the records go far beyond a simple money case.
Background still frames the dispute. US filings from the early 1990s described a Nigeria based group that moved white heroin into the United States and sold it in Chicago. The government named Tinubu along with Adegboyega Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele in the forfeiture papers and said drug proceeds went into US bank accounts opened or controlled by Tinubu. Investigators said the sums did not match his reported lawful income at the time. Those claims were never tested in a criminal trial against Tinubu.
NN News Media reported that many Nigerians are now demanding release of the records. They argue that citizens have a right to know the full history of the person occupying the country’s highest office. They also ask a hard question of Washington. If the United States expects other countries to help expose and prosecute international drug networks, should it not also show maximum openness when its own agencies hold records on a historical drug investigation involving the president of another country?
The Washington firm pushing the latest update, Von Batten Montague York, is not a neutral bystander. Public filings show it holds a paid contract with former Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar, Tinubu’s main political rival. The firm has spent months sending older Justice Department papers to Trump administration officials and members of Congress and arguing that Americans should see the full file. Critics in Nigeria call the campaign a political hit job dressed up as transparency. Supporters say a sitting president’s old US law enforcement file is fair game.
What the 399 pages actually contain is still unknown to the public. The FBI has asked to explain some withholdings only to the judge, saying open discussion could reveal investigative methods or put people at risk. The judge must now decide what can be released, what must stay sealed, and how much of Tinubu’s privacy claim survives the public interest argument that he now leads Africa’s most populous country.
The firm’s closing question is the one now hanging over Washington and Abuja. If the search really produced hundreds of pages, what is in them, and why does the Nigerian president want Americans and Nigerians kept from reading the file?
