The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was among the people named in a criminal investigation from the early 1990s involving the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The FBI affidavit submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington was prepared as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking access to law-enforcement records linked to Tinubu. The affidavit was submitted to the court on August 28.
FBI records linked to drug investigation
In documents submitted to the court, the FBI said the requested records were collected during an investigation into alleged crimes involving multiple people and linked to illegal drug trafficking. The agency said Tinubu’s name appeared in FBI materials related to the investigation.
Sections of the affidavit published by Washington-based lobbying firm Von Batten-Montague-York also stated that the documents were created during a possible drug-trafficking investigation involving multiple people. The firm said it received numerous documents from the FBI, reviewed the records before publishing them and redacted some sections.
Greenspan sought the full file
The lawsuit filed by U.S. citizen Aaron Greenspan sought the disclosure of the entire FBI file concerning Tinubu, along with interrogation and interview records from 1992 and 1993.
The documents were linked to a broader investigation into heroin trafficking and money laundering conducted from Chicago in the early 1990s.
Files contain no criminal conviction
Beryl Howell, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ruled in court documents published in April 2025 that the fact that Tinubu’s name appeared in a criminal investigation involving the FBI and DEA had been formally acknowledged.
Following the ruling, the FBI and DEA were required to search for and review documents requested under the FOIA that were not legally barred from disclosure. The court files contain no ruling that Tinubu committed any crime. Tinubu’s lawyers, meanwhile, oppose the release of some of the documents.
