U.S. Court Orders FBI, DEA to File Another Joint Status Report by August 7 on Release of Tinubu’s Unredacted Heroin Trafficking Records

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to file another Joint Status Report (JSR) by August 7, 2025 to update the Court on the release schedule for the unredacted records of their 1993 heroin trafficking which named Nigerian President Bola Tinubu as a central figure in Chicago’s heroin trade.

Judge Beryl A. Howell made the order in response to a JSR filed by the FBI and DEA on June 30, where both agencies claimed that they needed until December 1, 2025 to carry out the requested searches and start producing the documents without the existing redactions.

It will be recalled that the initial Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit demanding the public release of the records was instituted in 2023 by Plainsite.org founder Aaron Greenspan with assistance from West Africa Weekly Editor-in-Chief David Hundeyin following the publication of West Africa Weekly’s comprehensive investigation into Bola Tinubu’s background.

While the files were partially released in 5 batches between September 2023 and January 2024, all direct mentions of Tinubu and his family were redacted, which led Greenspan to challenge the redactions in court. The FBI and DEA unsuccessfully argued that the redactions were in the best interests of US national security and that Nigerians were not entitled to have access to such information about Nigeria’s president. Subsequently in May 2025, Judge Howell delivered a summary judgement ordering the immediate removal of the redactions.

Having lost the suit instituted by Greenspan, the FBI attempted to deploy administrative tricks to stall the release of the full and unredacted Tinubu drug trafficking records as long as possible, stating “it expects to completes its searches by September 1, 2025, and thereafter expects to begin making interim responses to [Greenspan] by December 1, 2025, and every 30 days thereafter until processing is completed.”

The FBI’s reason for the unusually long period requested for acting on the judgment was that “the time to begin interim responses is the result of approximately 10,000 pending FOIA requests and limited resources.”

Greenspan objected to this position, stating the FBI and DEA’s positions “are manifestly unreasonable and that [the] Court should order production by each agency to begin immediately.”

While the FBI and DEA proposed another joint status report on or before August 14, 2025, to apprise the Court of the status of processing and production, Greenspan insisted it should be filed on or before July 31, 2025. Judge Howell ruled that the JSR should be filed by August 7.

West Africa Weekly will monitor and update this story as it develops. You can read the full JSR here.

Read More:

• Cameroon’s 92-Year-Old President, Paul Biya, Declares Bid to Run for Eighth Term in October Election
• Nigeria: Tinubu’s ‘Renewed Hope’ Agenda Under Scrutiny for Inconsistent Records

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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Kangmwa Gofwen

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