The presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Oeter Obi, says President Bola Tinubu should confront questions about his past rather than seek to withhold records of public interest.
Obi spoke in a statement titled ‘A President and the Endless Question of His Past’ issued on Sunday, a day after Tinubu asked a United States court to reject a motion seeking the release of records relating to investigations allegedly involving him.
Tinubu who joined the case as an intervenor, asked the US district court for the district of Columbia to allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to maintain redactions and withholdings in records already released.
The president’s lawyers argued that privacy provisions under US law protect the records and that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) does not provide a basis for obtaining information about private individuals.
The case followed FOIA requests by Aar- on Greenspan, founder of PlainSite, for records concerning Tinubu, including FBI interview records from 1992 to 1993.
The requests relate to investigative records concerning a Chicago heroin ring that operated in the early 1990s. Tinubu was among four individuals named in the requests.
In April 2025, Beryl Howell, a US district judge, ruled that the FBI and DEA’s earlier refusal to confirm or deny whether they had records relating to Tinubu was improper
She ordered the agencies to search for and process non-exempt records responsive to Greenspan’s requests. The agencies subsequently released thousands of documents, some with redactions. Greenspan later asked the court to order further disclosure.
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