Tinubu Joins Fight to Keep His US Records Sealed

WASHINGTON, D.C./ABUJA

President Bola Tinubu has formally joined the US government’s request to keep sealed a set of FBI records connected to a decades-old Chicago narcotics case, according to court filings reported by Daily Sun and other outlets this weekend, a development that keeps a three-year-old American transparency lawsuit tangled up in Nigeria’s approaching 2027 election.

Tinubu, who has never been charged with any offence in the matter, is not a defendant in the underlying case; he appears in the litigation as an intervenor seeking to prevent public disclosure of the records, which his lawyers maintain relate to a civil forfeiture settled in 1993, not a criminal conviction.

A fight that has run for three years

The case, Aaron Greenspan v. Executive Office for US Attorneys, stems from a dozen Freedom of Information Act requests filed in 2022 and 2023 by American transparency campaigner Aaron Greenspan, seeking FBI and DEA files on a Chicago heroin-trafficking investigation from the early 1990s in which Tinubu’s name surfaced.

Judge Beryl Howell ruled in April 2025 that federal agencies could no longer refuse to confirm the records’ existence, though she was careful to note this said nothing about whether the underlying allegations were true.

A hardening deadline

Findings by ValidViewNetwork show that by August 2026, the case had reached its sharpest point yet. The FBI asked for a 10-day extension to explain, in a private filing, why parts of the file should remain secret, warning that public disclosure could endanger lives or expose investigative techniques.

Judge Howell granted only four extra days, setting 21 August as the new deadline and ordering the FBI, DEA, Department of Justice and Tinubu’s legal team to file final opposition to release by 28 August, “and no later.”

The FBI met that date by delivering its explanation to the judge alone, under seal.

Tinubu’s camp makes its case

According to reporting reviewed by ValidViewNetwork, Tinubu’s legal team has argued that releasing the file now, barely months before Nigeria’s election season intensifies, risks handing political opponents a weapon regardless of what the records actually contain.

ADVERTISEMENT

That argument has been amplified largely through a Washington lobbying firm retained by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is expected to challenge Tinubu again in 2027, a detail that has fed suspicion in some quarters that the case is being used for domestic political effect even though the litigation predates any 2027 campaign positioning.

Where the case stands now

Judge Howell has set 11 September for Greenspan’s response and 18 September for the government’s final reply, meaning any ruling on what the public eventually sees remains weeks away.

For now, the file stays sealed, and Tinubu’s own opposition to its release, rather than settling the matter, has become news in its own right.