The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has acknowledged in a sworn court declaration that records relating to Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu were compiled in connection with an investigation involving multiple individuals for drug-trafficking crimes.
The declaration, filed before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on August 28, 2026, stated that the records were compiled in furtherance of an FBI investigation into multiple individuals for drug-trafficking offences.
The agency also stated that the court had previously determined that an official acknowledgement had been made concerning an investigation involving Tinubu.
The development is part of an ongoing legal dispute over the release of FBI records relating to Tinubu and other individuals allegedly connected to a Chicago-based heroin-trafficking investigation that operated in the early 1990s.
The records were sought by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed between 2022 and 2023.
Among the documents requested by Greenspan were what he described as the “entire FBI file” on Tinubu, as well as FBI Form 302 interview records involving the Nigerian president from 1992 and 1993.
The FBI declaration was signed by an official serving as Acting Section Chief of the agency’s Record/Information Dissemination Section, which is responsible for processing and responding to requests for records under the FOIA.
The latest disclosure follows an April 2025 ruling by US District Judge Beryl Howell, who ordered the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to lift their previous refusal to confirm or deny whether records relating to the investigation existed.
Judge Howell had determined that the agencies had failed to establish sufficient privacy grounds to conceal the fact that Tinubu had been the subject of an investigation.
The ruling, however, did not establish that Tinubu committed a drug-trafficking offence, nor did it amount to a criminal conviction against him.
The distinction is significant because the existence or official acknowledgement of an investigation does not, by itself, establish criminal wrongdoing.
The FBI has continued to withhold portions of the records, citing several exemptions under the FOIA. The exemptions cover areas including personal privacy, protection of confidential sources, law-enforcement techniques and information whose disclosure could potentially endanger the life or physical safety of individuals.
The agency said it could not publicly disclose the full basis for some of the exemptions because doing so could itself reveal protected law-enforcement information.
The legal dispute has attracted considerable political attention in Nigeria, particularly as the country approaches the 2027 presidential election.
The issue has been amplified by political interests associated with opposition figures, including former Vice-President and African Democratic Congress presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.
A Washington-based lobbying firm, Von Batten-Montague-York, which was hired by Atiku ahead of the 2027 election, posted portions of the FBI declaration on X. The firm said it had received a large volume of records and was reviewing and redacting them before publication.
The firm interpreted the FBI declaration as confirmation that Tinubu had been criminally investigated in connection with a heroin-trafficking case.
However, the court proceedings, as reflected in the available material, do not establish that Tinubu was convicted of or found guilty of drug trafficking.
Tinubu has challenged the further release of the records through his legal representatives — Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson and Oluwole O. Afolabi.
His lawyers have asked the court to prevent additional disclosure, arguing that releasing the records would violate the President’s privacy rights.
They have also argued that the purpose of FOIA is to promote transparency regarding the activities of the US government, rather than provide a mechanism for extracting personal information about individuals from government archives.
The legal battle therefore remains centred on how much of the requested FBI material can lawfully be released and what information can continue to be withheld under the applicable FOIA exemptions.
The latest FBI declaration has nevertheless renewed attention on the long-running records dispute and is likely to intensify political debate in Nigeria ahead of the 2027 presidential election. FBI records can be released, with the agency continuing to rely on statutory exemptions to withhold portions of the material.
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