Several United States government agencies are expected to release investigation reports on Friday, May 2, in connection with the decades-old alleged drug-related case involving Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
The release follows a directive from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which mandated the involved agencies, excluding the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to submit a joint status report and disclose relevant documents by the stated deadline.
The U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, Department of State, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the CIA are among the agencies expected to comply.
Judge Beryl Howell, presiding over the case, ruled in favour of transparency in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit filed in June 2023 by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan.
Howell stated that continued withholding of the documents was “neither logical nor plausible.”
Greenspan submitted 12 FOIA requests between 2022 and 2023 to six different U.S. agencies, seeking records from a joint federal investigation allegedly involving Tinubu and three others—Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Abiodun Agbele—said to be associated with a drug trafficking operation.
Meanwhile, the presidency has downplayed the significance of the court-mandated release, asserting that the documents do not contain any new or incriminating information against President Tinubu.