The presidency has moved to correct what it calls misleading narratives around a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in the United States, stressing that the matter is a records-disclosure dispute and not a criminal proceeding against President Bola Tinubu.
In a statement issued Thursday by the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, said the case before the US District Court for the District of Columbia stems from FOIA requests filed in 2022 by Aaron Greenspan, an American who has worked with Nigerian opposition figures including David Hundeyin and Atiku Abubakar.
Greenspan sought records on Tinubu from several federal agencies and, after some of his requests were denied, filed Civil Action No. 23-1816 in 2023. The court later allowed Tinubu to join the case as an intervenor.
According to the statement, the court has already dismissed the CIA, the US Attorney’s Office, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the IRS from the case after they invoked the “Glomar” defense, a standard position in which an agency neither confirms nor denies that records exist, often to protect sensitive law-enforcement methods. That leaves only the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration still contesting portions of the case.
Onanuga said the two agencies have already released 399 pages of documents but redacted parts of them, citing legal protections that include grand jury secrecy rules, attorney-client privilege, law-enforcement and personal-privacy exemptions, and provisions shielding confidential sources and investigative techniques.
Greenspan is challenging those redactions, and Tinubu has separately invoked a privacy-related exemption of his own.
The statement noted that Greenspan has until September 11 to respond to filings from the government and Tinubu’s legal team, while the FBI, DEA and the president have until September 18 to reply in turn. Presiding over the case is Judge Beryl A. Howell.
The presidency also pushed back on public remarks by Karl von Batten, an associate of Atiku Abubakar, saying neither man is a party to the litigation despite recent commentary suggesting otherwise.
It urged Nigerian media to separate the court’s actual proceedings from what it described as partisan speculation, reiterating that withheld or redacted records do not, on their own, amount to any finding of wrongdoing.
