Tinubu’s dark past imperils Nigeria’s sovereignty: In Tinubu, the western hegemons have finally got what they had always desired in a Nigerian president – a vulnerable leader hobbled by his past. With Tinubu as president, Nigeria doesn’t stand a chance because the worst thing that can happen to a people is to be in a debilitating bind where a president’s dark past becomes an albatross imperiling the country’s sovereignty.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
It is indubitable, all pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding, that this is not the best of times for President Bola Tinubu. Granted, he is a hard guy – tough, unyielding and some will say lacking in empathy – but even the hardest of men have their vulnerable moments.
This must be such a moment for Tinubu because nothing can be more unsettling for a leader than when the past, which he thought has been successfully buried, returns like a phoenix, an apparition of sorts, with unresolved events, haunting like a ghost. But make no mistake about it. Nigerians are not spared because it is a nightmare for a people to have a leader who is haunted by his dark past. The country is worse for it.
Right now President Tinubu is engaged in a mortal combat with his own past. He is doing everything humanly possible to ensure that whatever he did in Chicago, the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois more than three decades ago remains buried in the ash heap of history – completely forgotten.
That may well have been the case if he had remained a private citizen. But he isn’t. Tinubu is the President of Nigeria, a country with no less than 230 million people. And it is only normal that the citizens know everything about him including his past.
And that past includes what is already in the public domain. In the early 1990s, U.S. authorities carried out investigations into alleged drug trafficking involving Tinubu. In 1993, $460,000 was seized from an account linked to him, a forfeiture tied to a Chicago heroin ring. Tinubu himself acknowledges this but his supporters claim that the forfeiture was civil in nature. He was neither charged with a criminal offense nor formally indicted, they chorus as if that deodorises the stench which the forfeiture emits.
His opponents demur, insisting that he was criminally charged. In 2022, an American researcher, Aaron Greenspan, who runs the transparency platform PlainSite, filed 12 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with six U.S. federal agencies seeking information relating to the Chicago heroin ring. He sought investigative records about four named individuals allegedly associated with the drug ring, including Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande and Abiodun Agbele.
Five of the U.S. agencies responded, saying that they could neither confirm nor deny the existence of the requested records. Dissatisfied, Greenspan approached the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (OIP) for help, but to no avail.
On June 12, 2023, he filed a lawsuit at a U.S. Court for the District of Columbia presided over by Judge Beryl Howell challenging the agencies’ Glomar response to his FOIA requests. A Glomar response is an official statement by a U.S. government agency refusing to confirm or deny whether requested records exist. Though the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA), and Department of State were initially named as defendants, the CIA was also later named as a defendant.
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In April 2025, Judge Howell, convinced that the Glomar responses issued by the FBI and DEA were “improper and must be lifted” ruled that the two agencies failed to provide information to “establish that cognisable privacy interest exists in keeping secret the fact that Tinubu was a subject of criminal investigation.” She further held that the two agencies failed to provide evidence demonstrating the burden of sustaining their Glomar responses.
But for Tinubu, the information that Greenspan was seeking to make public is a matter of life and death. It is too sordid to be made a menu on the breakfast table of fellow citizens. He promptly asked the U.S. court to block the release of the records held by the Department of Justice (DOJ), FBI and DEA. In the 16-page court filing, his lawyers, Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson and Oluwole O. Afolabi, argued that releasing the records could infringe on Tinubu’s privacy rights.
“Regardless of the prior disclosure in the forfeiture proceeding, Intervenor retains a privacy interest in potential disclosure of the investigative files sought by Plaintiff,” the lawyers argued in court.
But the judge, unimpressed, ordered that the files be released and gave a deadline. Both the U.S. DOJ and Tinubu’s legal team requested a 10-day extension to respond. Judge Howell granted only four days, until August 21.
On August 20, the FBI filed a motion seeking to submit an ex parte in camera declaration – a written statement submitted solely to a judge by a party in a legal case – on why it withheld information on its investigative records relating to Tinubu’s drug trafficking scandal, an application which was subsequently published in the social media by Von Batten-Montague-York, a Washington-based lobbying firm recently hired by Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
The FBI claimed that Greenspan’s request seeking “the entire FBI file for Bola Ahmed Tinubu, DOB 3/29/1952, President-Elect of Nigeria as of February 2023” and “FBI 302 interviews with Bola Tinubu from FBI Case No. 245-IP-71386-UUUUUU during the timeframe 1992-1993” if acceded to “would, among other things, disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations and/or could reasonably be expected to endanger the life or physical safety of any individual.”
Judge Howell granted the FBI request and the agency has handed in a 399-page unredacted file for her eyes only. It is left for her to make a decision after perusing the documents but it is unlikely that she will overrule the FBI because the U.S. national interest is now at play. So, Nigerians may never get to know in details what is in those files, the extent of his drug dealings – a past he is too mortified to own up to. That is why he is fighting a pitched legal battle in the U.S. with our patrimony.
But technically, it is a battle he has already lost not only in the court of public opinion but also the conventional court even if Judge Howell decides to play the FBI game. The whole world now knows the truth and filing a case to block the release of his drug trafficking record is, in itself, an admittance of guilt. If there is nothing to hide, why the hassles? Only the guilty are afraid in such circumstance.
Tinubu, contrary to what he claims, was criminally investigated and possibly indicted in the U.S. And while Nigerians may never have access to the 399-page file, Americans and, indeed, much of the international community do and they know that something in there frightens the hell out of the president of Africa’s most populous country. They know what he is hiding – the putrid smelling skeletons in his Chicago cupboard. They also know that he would do anything to keep the demons from his past which are unrelenting and unsparing in haunting him, at bay.
Some Nigerians have rallied to his support with the argument that everyone has a past. To such people, what is important now is his ability to deliver on his extant job. Even when we assume, without necessarily conceding that such sentiment is altruistic, those who hold it miss the point because what Tinubu is desperately trying to hide from compatriots and the foreigners helping him in that gambit will determine how well he governs.
How do I mean? FBI, the U.S. principal domestic law enforcement and internal security agency, which is fighting hard to ensure that the contents of those files are not made public doesn’t care a hoot about Tinubu. Neither does the CIA. What matters is national interest. Every powerful country protects its own interest, most often at the expense of others.
And what could be the U.S. national interest here? Tinubu, the president of a country awash with critical minerals essential for modern economies, national security and clean energy technologies, which the U.S. craves for, is seeking a favour, which they are in a position to grant in exchange for something.
So, the FBI will do all they can to keep the information redacted for as long as Tinubu plays ball. And a man as desperate as Tinubu is to cling on to power will not only play ball, but ask how high when he is asked to jump. He will not only mortgage the country’s present but also its future.
Therein lies the existential threat facing Nigeria. What is the quid pro quo? What will Tinubu surrender to the U.S. in return for their studied silence on his drug dealings in their country? Nigeria’s sovereignty, no doubt! As a leader, Tinubu is gravely compromised, perhaps Nigeria’s most compromised leader, ever. To him, nothing is profane. What matters is survival. Any country unfortunate to have such a leader suffers unmitigated collateral damage on the global chessboard of influence.
By agreeing to stymie the exposure of his dark past, the U.S. has effectively put Tinubu on a leash. That is the easiest route for a president to become a CIA asset, a useful idiot. Contrary to what some Nigerians wish, Donald Trump, America’s most transactional president, may even help him to secure a second term.
In Tinubu, the western hegemons have finally got what they had always desired in a Nigerian president – a vulnerable leader hobbled by his past. With Tinubu as president, Nigeria doesn’t stand a chance because the worst thing that can happen to a people is to be in a debilitating bind where a president’s dark past becomes an albatross imperilling the country’s sovereignty.
