Judge, Not Public, Gets First Look at Tinubu’s FBI File

WASHINGTON, D.C./ABUJA

A three-year-old American transparency lawsuit over President Bola Tinubu’s decades-old brush with U.S. drug investigators reached a quiet but pointed new stage on Friday, 28 August 2026, when the FBI hand-delivered records on the matter to a federal judge, not to the public, and not to the man who sued for them, but to the court alone, for a private look.

Tinubu, who has never been criminally charged in the matter and has consistently denied wrongdoing, is not a defendant in the case; the lawsuit is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) action brought against U.S. federal agencies by an American transparency campaigner, with Tinubu’s lawyers appearing only as an intervening party seeking to keep the records sealed.

A 1993 case that has never quite gone away

The dispute traces back more than three decades, to a Chicago-based narcotics investigation that predates Tinubu’s political career.

Findings by ValidViewNetwork, drawing on court documents cited across Nigerian and international outlets, show that U.S. investigators in the early 1990s examined a heroin-trafficking network run by Chicago figures Adegboyega Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele, active between 1988 and 1991.

An IRS agent’s affidavit alleged that proceeds from the ring passed through bank accounts opened in Tinubu’s name, and in January 1992 a U.S. court froze more than $1.4 million linked to those accounts.By October 1993, after Tinubu contested the claim through his lawyers, the matter ended in a civil settlement rather than a criminal trial: $460,000 held in a First Heritage Bank account bearing his name was forfeited to the U.S. government, while the remaining funds were released to him.

Crucially, court records reviewed by Premium Times and other outlets over the years confirm Tinubu was never indicted in the case, a distinction his supporters have repeatedly stressed, even as critics argue the forfeiture itself raises unresolved questions.

Three years of delay

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The current phase of the saga began in 2022 and 2023, when U.S. transparency advocate Aaron Greenspan, working alongside Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin, filed a dozen FOIA requests with six federal agencies seeking the FBI’s file on Tinubu and three others tied to the old Chicago case.

Several agencies initially gave what U.S. law calls a “Glomar” response, refusing to even confirm or deny that responsive records existe.

Greenspan sued after the Justice Department’s internal appeals office upheld that stance. The case landed before Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who in April 2025 rejected the agencies’ continued use of the Glomar response, ruling that the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had effectively already acknowledged the existence of records touching Tinubu.

That ruling did not, the judge was careful to note, establish that any of the underlying allegations were true, only that the agencies could no longer dodge the question of whether files existed.

What followed, according to court filings seen by ValidViewNetwork, was a long run of missed dates: an interim response promised for May 2025 slipped to January 2026, then February, with the agencies repeatedly asking for more time.

By August 2026, Judge Howell’s patience had visibly thinned.

A judge sets a final deadline, and the FBI blinks

On 20 August, the FBI filed a motion asking the court for permission to explain its position privately, warning in an accompanying filing that disclosure could, in its words, expose sensitive investigative methods and even endanger lives.

Judge Howell granted the request the next day, but on tighter terms than the agency wanted: rather than the ten additional days sought by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office, she gave a four-day window, setting 21 August as a hard deadline and ordering the FBI, DEA, Department of Justice and Tinubu’s own legal team to file any final opposition to public release by 28 August, “and no later,” as her order put it.

That deadline is what produced Friday’s development. Rather than releasing the file to Greenspan or the public, the FBI hand-delivered the records to the courthouse for Judge Howell’s eyes only, submitted “under seal, ex parte, in camera”, legal shorthand for a private submission made without the opposing side present.

The judge is now expected to review the material herself before ruling on how much, if any, should reach public view.

Two arguments, one file

The submission crystallises a dispute that has run through the entire case: the FBI’s position that FOIA exists to shed light on how government agencies operate, not to hand over private information about individuals, against Greenspan’s argument that a president’s fitness for office is precisely the kind of question the public has a right to examine.

Tinubu’s legal team has added its own layer to that argument, telling the court that releasing the records now could hand political opponents a weapon ahead of Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election, a concern that keeps this ostensibly American court fight tangled up in Nigerian politics.

Adding to that tangle, updates on the case have circulated less through official court channels than through a Washington lobbying firm retained by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who is widely expected to challenge Tinubu again in 2027, a detail that has fed suspicion in some quarters that the case is being amplified for domestic political effect, even as the underlying litigation predates any 2027 campaign positioning.

What happens next

For now, the file stays sealed. Judge Howell’s order sets 11 September for Greenspan to respond to the government’s summary judgment motion, and 18 September for the government’s final reply, meaning any ruling on what the public eventually sees is still weeks away at the earliest.

The Presidency has previously maintained, through allies, that the file contains nothing new, arguing that the broad contours of the 1993 case have been public knowledge for years.

Whether Judge Howell agrees, once she has read what the FBI just handed her, is the question the rest of this case now turns on.