ABUJA — President Bola Tinubu has formally joined a request by the U.S. Department of Justice for additional time in a long-running Freedom of Information Act lawsuit involving records concerning him, according to a Washington-based lobbying firm retained by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar .
CDA News Nigeria gathered that U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell, however, rejected the full 10-day extension request and set August 21, 2026, as the deadline for the government and Tinubu to respond . The lawsuit was instituted by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan, who is seeking records held by the FBI, DEA, and other US agencies concerning past investigations involving Tinubu .
CDA News Nigeria reports that the records relate to a 1993 civil forfeiture of $460,000 linked to a Chicago-based heroin-trafficking investigation from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Tinubu has consistently denied wrongdoing and has not been criminally convicted of drug trafficking in the United States .
Von Batten-Montague-York, the firm behind the disclosure, accused Tinubu of seeking to use the delay to lobby U.S. officials against releasing the records, arguing that disclosure could affect U.S.-Nigeria relations . The firm has been actively distributing more than 60 pages of DOJ documents to officials in the Trump administration and Congress since July 2026 .
The case has been pending for more than three years, and the records are being sought as political attention intensifies ahead of Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election .
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