APC presidential candidate and current Nigerian President Bola Tinubu | BBC Nigerian President Bola Tinubu | BBC The criminal and immigration records of Bola Tinubu that are held by the United States will not be revealed until the year 2026, according to the authorities in court documents reviewed by Peoples Gazette.
Both the United States Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation gave the excuse of 'exceptional circumstances' for their decision to withhold the documents from the general public.
In response to a freedom of information request, the authorities in the United States stated that even if they were to reveal the material, they would not be able to do so until at least January 2026 even if they did so willingly.
In recent days, a civil action about the issue has been submitted to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington, District of Columbia. The case will be heard by Judge Beryl Howell.
An American activist for public disclosure named Aaron Greenspan had already submitted a request to a number of federal and local agencies, including the FBI, the State Department, the Department of Treasury, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, in an effort to obtain an immediate release of Mr. Tinubu's immigration and criminal records.
The documents were submitted at the same time as Mr. Tinubu maintained in court that he had not committed any crimes during his decades-long stay in the United States. Mr. Tinubu also defended his right to his identity, despite the fact that there is evidence suggesting he may have used a different name and altered his educational history in the past.
The public is unaware of the omissions and inconsistencies in Mr. Tinubu's genuine identity as well as his educational records because he has not explained them. For example, when running for governor of Lagos in 1999, the current president of Nigeria swore under oath to the electoral authority INEC that he had attended the illustrious University of Chicago. This statement was made when he was running for that office.
Since then, the university has distanced itself from Mr. Tinubu. Another university in the United States, Chicago State University, has verified that a Bola Tinubu attended the institution. However, the university did not confirm whether or not this Bola Tinubu was the Nigerian president. Documents from the school indicated that a person having the name Bola Tinubu who attended the school in the 1970s was a female. These documents were from the school's archives.
Mr. Tinubu also testified in 1999 under oath that he attended primary and secondary schools in Lagos and Ibadan in the 1950s and 1960s; however, he removed such allegations from his most recent INEC application form in advance of the general elections that would take place in February of this year. He did not provide an explanation for why he erased the statements, despite the fact that there was no evidence that the primary school he claimed to have attended in Nigeria ever existed.
In 1993, court filings in the United States characterised Mr. Tinubu, then age 71, as a money launderer who handled the proceeds of cocaine trafficking. At that time, he was responsible for a loss of $460.000.
The records were an essential component of an ongoing challenge to Mr. Tinubu's election as president of Nigeria, which was brought before a tribunal in Abuja that was hearing election cases. Mr. Greenspan, who owns PlainSite, a website that holds papers from American courts and institutions, was prompted as a result of this to submit several requests to U.S. agencies that were in possession of documents that could assist clear some of the major uncertainties that were troubling the minds of Nigerians.
It is thought that the State Department has documents that can determine whether or not the individual who sought for a visa to the United States and travelled under the name Bola Tinubu in the 1970s is the same person who is currently in charge of Nigeria.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may be able to shed more insight on how Mr. Tinubu became involved in the drug trade in the United States as well as any criminal charges that he may have faced but do not appear in public records.
In a letter dated May 15, 2023 and sent to Mr. Greenspan, the State Department informed him that "due to unusual circumstances, this office will not be able to respond within the 20 days provided by the statute."
Before, on August 4, 2022, the FBI had communicated with Mr. Greenspan by sending him a note that read, "Please be advised that 'unusual circumstances' apply to the processing of your request."
However, on March 22, 2023, the FBI announced that it would try to release all of the records connected to Mr. Tinubu that it possessed, but that this wouldn't happen until at the earliest January 2026. Other government organisations, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Internal Revenue Service of the Department of the Treasury, have also stated that they will not release the information for the same reasons.
In addition to this, the FBI stated that Mr. Greenspan "failed to demonstrate that the requested information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations and activities of the government." However, the activist quickly responded by explaining that Mr. Tinubu's drug forfeiture case in Chicago was the event that brought the most people to the website of his group over the course of the previous year. The database on the internet has more than 15 million entries.
Now, all of the agencies have been ordered to appear in court to show cause why records belonging to a Nigerian president should be considered peculiar and unimportant to be made available to the general public.
The case was initially filed on June 12, 2023. On July 17, Assistant United States Attorney Jared Littman entered an appearance as the lawyer representing all of the agencies, and he swiftly asked a postponement until August 28, 2023, in order to file a response to the lawsuit. The lawsuit was initially filed.
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