Tinubu Drug Trafficking Records: US Judge Sets New Deadline Amid Atiku Lobbying Push
A United States federal judge has set August 21, 2026, as a new deadline for the release of Department of Justice records related to decades-old allegations linking Nigerian President Bola Tinubu to drug trafficking, according to a Washington-based lobbying firm retained by former Vice President and African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar.
According to a statement from the firm, Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C., US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, had asked the federal court for a 10-day extension to comply with a standing court order directing the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to release the records. US District Judge Beryl Howell, however, granted only a four-day extension, setting the new deadline for August 21. The firm said Judge Howell cited the length of time the case had remained pending, noting it had already been before the court for more than three years.
The records at the centre of the case stem from Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed between 2022 and 2023 by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan, founder of the legal transparency platform PlainSite, who sought information regarding a historical federal investigation into an alleged drug trafficking organisation said to have operated between Nigeria and the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to documents previously circulated by the lobbying firm, the underlying case, filed in 1993 before the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and titled United States v. Funds in Account No. 263226700 et al., involved a federal civil forfeiture action concerning bank accounts the DOJ alleged contained proceeds connected to narcotics trafficking or money laundering. The documents named Tinubu alongside two other individuals, Adegboyega Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele, as figures referenced in the government’s original allegations from that era.
Reacting to the newly set deadline, Von Batten-Montague-York welcomed what it described as renewed efforts by the DOJ to comply with the court’s directives. “We deeply appreciate US Attorney Pirro and the DOJ’s renewed motivation to release these documents, and we agree with Judge Howell. This case has been pending for three years. The time to release the Tinubu drug-trafficking files is now,” the firm said in a statement, adding that Washington’s strategic relationship with Nigeria should not stand in the way of complying with a judicial directive.
The development follows an earlier ruling by Judge Howell in April 2025, in which she directed relevant US agencies to process and release non-exempt records connected to Greenspan’s FOIA requests, having found that the agencies could not rely on a blanket refusal to confirm or deny the existence of such records. It also comes weeks after the same lobbying firm disclosed that it had begun sharing historical DOJ records concerning the allegations with members of the Trump administration, Congress and senior congressional staff, as part of a 12-month, $1.2 million lobbying contract it entered with Atiku in March 2026.
The allegations linking Tinubu to the decades-old US case previously resurfaced prominently during Nigeria’s 2023 presidential election litigation, when his political opponents, including Atiku and Peter Obi, cited the US proceedings in an unsuccessful attempt to challenge his constitutional qualification to contest the presidency. Both the Presidential Election Petition Court and the Supreme Court of Nigeria dismissed those claims and upheld Tinubu’s election victory. President Tinubu has consistently and repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in connection with the allegations and has never been criminally convicted of drug trafficking in the United States. As of the time of filing, the Nigerian Presidency had not issued a fresh statement specifically responding to the new August 21 deadline for the release of the records.
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