A Washington lobbying outfit working for Atiku Abubakar has publicly questioned a 2003 letter that supporters of President Bola Tinubu have used to claim he has no American criminal record. The firm Von Batten Montague York said the document circulating online and in Nigerian politics looks too sloppy to accept as a genuine United States government paper without proof from the source.
The letter is dated 4 February 2003. It is presented as a reply from Michael H Bonner, then legal attaché at the American Consulate in Lagos, to then Inspector General of Police Tafa Balogun. It says an FBI National Crime Information Center check on Bola Ahmed Tinubu, date of birth given as 29 March 1952, found no criminal arrest records, wants or warrants.
The firm listed obvious mistakes. Check is spelled czheck. Maintains appears as maitatins. Its territories is written as it’s territories. The sentence about results uses were instead of was. Other lines read as incomplete English such as nor information of your department and contact me direct.
Von Batten Montague York said those errors make it very hard to treat the paper as authentic. The firm added that if the letter is not real, passing off a fake United States official communication would be a serious matter under American law.
The same letter has been in Nigerian newspapers and court files since at least 2022. It was put before judges during the 2023 presidential election petition. Reno Omokri, now an ambassador designate and a vocal Tinubu defender, recently shared it again and told critics to write the United States Embassy in Abuja if they doubt it.
The lobbying firm was hired by Atiku under a 1.2 million dollar year long contract. Its work includes briefing the Trump administration and Congress on a 1993 civil forfeiture case in which United States prosecutors alleged that heroin proceeds from a Chicago linked network were put into bank accounts tied to Tinubu. That case was civil, not a criminal conviction. Tinubu has long denied any crime.
The fight is political. Atiku’s camp wants the old American files kept in view before the 2027 election. Tinubu’s camp points to the 2003 check as proof he was never arrested or wanted in the United States. Neither the State Department nor the embassy has issued a fresh public statement calling the letter real or fake.
A clean NCIC result covers arrests and warrants. It does not automatically wipe every civil file or investigative mention. The typos do not by themselves prove the letter was invented last week. They do give opponents a simple reason to demand the original or an official confirmation. For now the paper remains a weapon in a long running argument rather than a settled official fact.
The U.S. Embassy in Nigeria has not publicly responded to a disputed letter shared by presidential supporter Reno Omokri that was presented as an official communication from the American Embassy, as a U.S. lobbying firm continues to question the document’s authenticity.
