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🇳🇬 Nigeria /Elections & Politics

Tinubu’s US records dispute is a civil matter, presidency says

From The Punch · () English

Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Official statement In the courts
  • Nigeria’s presidency said a US lawsuit involving President Bola Tinubu concerns a civil Freedom of Information Act records dispute, not a criminal case.
  • The case began after transparency activist Aaron Greenspan sought records from US agencies and later named Tinubu as an intervenor.
  • The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration remain involved and have released 399 pages, some with redactions allowed under US law.

Nigeria’s presidency has pushed back against reports portraying President Bola Tinubu as the subject of a criminal case in the United States, saying the matter concerns access to government records under the Freedom of Information Act.

Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy Bayo Onanuga said the lawsuit, filed by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, had produced no finding that Tinubu committed wrongdoing.

Greenspan submitted FOIA requests in 2022 to several US government agencies and filed Civil Action No. 23-1816 in 2023. The court later allowed Tinubu to join the proceedings as an intervenor.

For clarity, the matter is a civil records-disclosure dispute under the United States Freedom of Information Act. It is not a criminal case against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, nor has the court found him guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.

· Bayo OnanugaThe presidential adviser rejected claims that the lawsuit constitutes a criminal case against Tinubu.

Onanuga said the Central Intelligence Agency, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service had been removed from the case after receiving summary judgment based on the “Glomar defence,” under which an agency neither confirms nor denies whether records exist.

The FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration remain parties to the case and have produced 399 pages of records. Some material was redacted under exemptions covering grand jury secrecy, attorney-client and attorney-work-product privilege, law-enforcement sensitivity, personal privacy, confidential informants and investigative techniques.

The presidency said the records dispute should not be presented as a criminal trial or a finding of guilt against Tinubu. It cited legal protections for grand jury transcripts and information about certain court orders authorizing pen-register or trap-and-trace devices, as well as documents involving legal advice sought by FBI and DEA agents.

Some of the documents are protected from being revealed to the public by law, for example, Grand Jury proceedings.

· Bayo OnanugaOnanuga explained why some records released in the case contain redactions.
About this summary

Originally published by The Punch in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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