A United States District Court in Columbia has ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to release records connected to the criminal investigation of Nigerian President Bola Tinubu over alleged drug trafficking activities.
In a ruling dated April 8, 2025, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell found that both agencies improperly issued “Glomar responses”—a refusal to confirm or deny the existence of the requested records. The decision came after American researcher Aaron Greenspan, founder of the legal transparency platform PlainSite, filed 12 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests between 2022 and 2023.
Greenspan sought records related to a drug trafficking ring that operated in Chicago in the early 1990s, specifically naming Tinubu along with three other individuals: Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Abiodun Agbele.
The court emphasized that the FBI and DEA had officially confirmed Tinubu’s investigation, stating that the public’s right to know outweighs any claimed privacy interests. “Any privacy interests implicated by the FOIA requests to the FBI and DEA for records about Tinubu are overcome by the public interest in release of such information,” Judge Howell wrote.
The court also pointed out that neither the FBI nor the DEA had shown valid reasons for maintaining secrecy. As a result, the agencies must now search for and process all non-exempt records related to the case.
Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was allowed to maintain its Glomar response after Greenspan acknowledged that the agency had properly followed legal protocols.
All parties involved have been instructed to provide a joint status report to the court by may 2 2025, detailing any remaining issues.
