By: Manoah Kikekon
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| Bola Tinubu |
In a significant legal move, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu has petitioned a U.S. court to enforce an order protecting his confidential records held by American law enforcement agencies.
The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, aims to prevent the release of files sought by a U.S. activist, framing the request as a political weapon rather than a legitimate inquiry.
President Tinubu’s legal team, led by attorney Wole Afolabi, argues that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from activist Aaron Greenspan are a blatant attempt to expose private information. The filings specifically target the "entire FBI file" on Tinubu and documents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The lawyers contend this violates the core purpose of FOIA, which is to shed light on government conduct, not to air the personal details of individuals.
The motion leverages key U.S. privacy laws, including the Privacy Act and FOIA Exemption 7(C), designed to protect law enforcement records from unwarranted invasions of personal privacy. Tinubu's counsel asserts that even as a public figure, the Nigerian president retains fundamental privacy rights, a principle upheld by past U.S. court precedents for government officials.
Central to Tinubu's argument is the claim that Greenspan’s motive is to influence Nigerian political disputes by publishing the records on his for-profit website, PlainSite.org. The legal filing stresses that the decades-old files pertain to a time when Tinubu was not a public official and that the "Nigerian public’s interest in an individual is not a basis for a FOIA request" in the United States.
In response, Aaron Greenspan has urged the court to deny the motion, accusing President Tinubu of using his position to target political opposition and critics. The court has not yet issued a ruling on this high-stakes privacy versus transparency case, which is being closely watched on both sides of the Atlantic.