Hundeyin and Greenspan Win FOIA Suit as US Court Orders FBI, Other Federal Agencies To Release Unredacted Files on Tinubu’s Heroin Trafficking

West Africa Weekly’s EIC David Hundeyin and Aaron Greenspan of Plainsite have won the lawsuit [No. 23-1816 (BAH)] which they jointly instituted against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), State Department and Justice Department regarding the unredacted release of law enforcement records relating to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s history of heroin trafficking in Chicago.

Judge Beryl A. Howell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia who made the ruling on Tuesday April 8, stated in the ruling that keeping such information away from public knowledge using Glomar responses under the excuse of individual privacy exemptions is “neither logical nor plausible.”

Accordingly, the FBI and DEA were ordered to produce and release the relevant files using taking into account their court-ordered non-exempt status. The judgment however, exempted the CIA from releasing the files it holds on Tinubu.

It will be recalled that the case was jointly instituted by Greenspan and Hundeyin as part of a collaboration that began after West Africa Weekly’s 2022 investigation and subsequent documentary titled “Bola Ahmed Tinubu: From Drug Lord To Presidential Candidate.”

5 of the 6 agencies listed in the suit had initially agreed to release over 3,000 pages of relevant records from October 2023. 5 batches of heavily redacted records – without a single visible mention of Tinubu’s name – were then released over 5 months by the FBI.

In response to the complainants’ request for summary judgment on releasing the unredacted records in November 2024, the DEA had incredibly attempted to argue that Tinubu’s right to individual privacy superceded the Nigerian public’s right to know and scrutinise the background of their president. An excerpt from the DEA’s November court filing reads:

[Plaintiff] fails to appreciate that the only relevant public interest that weighs into the calculus for purposes of Exemption 7(C) is “the citizens’ right to be informed about what their government is up to,” not what Tinubu was up to.

Finding in favor of Greenspan and Hundeyin on Tuesday, judge Howell ordered that the FBI and DEA must publicly release their full and unredacted records concerning Tinubu’s involvement in the heroin trafficking.

According to the Court order, both agencies must respond with a schedule for releasing the unredacted Tinubu files latest by May 2, 2025.

You can read the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment and defendant’s cross motion for summary judgment here.

West Africa Weekly will monitor and update this story as it develops.

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About The Author

Mayowa Durosinmi

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M. Durosinmi is a West Africa Weekly investigative reporter covering Politics, Human Rights, Health, and Security in West Africa and the Sahel Region

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