…Presidency: Tinubu Has No Criminal Case in US, Lobbyists Fishing for Dirt to Embarrass President, Nigeria
By Our Correspondents
A widening cross-section of Nigerian political figures, lawyers, and public affairs commentators has pushed back against the escalating campaign by a Washington lobbying firm over decades-old United States records concerning President Bola Tinubu, warning that an increasingly bitter domestic political contest is being exported abroad at potentially damaging cost to Nigeria’s international reputation.
The controversy intensified after Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C., a Washington-based lobbying and government affairs firm engaged by former Vice President and African Democratic Congress presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, stepped up efforts to draw the attention of the Donald Trump administration, members of Congress, and senior congressional officials to US records relating to Tinubu.
At the centre of the dispute is an ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation in Washington over records held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Presidency, however, moved on Thursday to draw what it described as an important distinction between the political claims surrounding the documents and the actual proceedings before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, said Tinubu is not facing a criminal prosecution in the United States and that the pending proceedings are strictly a civil dispute over access to government records.
“The litigation is a civil records-disclosure dispute under FOIA. It does not constitute a criminal charge, trial, or judicial finding against President Tinubu,” the Presidency said.
According to the State House, the FBI and DEA have already produced 399 pages of records, with portions redacted under exemptions contained in US law, and the remaining legal dispute essentially concerns whether those redactions and withholdings are lawful.
The Presidency accused Atiku’s lobbyists of seeking to turn that technical records dispute into a political indictment of the Nigerian President, insisting that neither Atiku nor Karl von Batten, the lobbyist leading the campaign, is a party to the FOIA case.
It described attempts to portray the proceedings otherwise as partisan speculation and urged Nigerian media organisations to distinguish allegations and political advocacy from findings actually made by the US court.
The backlash broadened on Wednesday when Deputy Spokesperson of the House of Representatives, Philip Agbese, warned that the political battle had begun to move beyond Tinubu personally to the reputation of Nigeria and Nigerians internationally.
Agbese said opposition politicians were entitled to challenge Tinubu’s policies, record, and suitability for another term, but argued that presenting Nigeria’s leadership to foreign governments through the prism of criminal allegations risked making the country’s international reputation collateral damage in the struggle for power.
“This has gone beyond politics. When desperate politicians begin to export their political battles and package Nigeria as a country whose leadership is allegedly built around criminality, they are not hurting President Tinubu alone,” Agbese said.
“They are damaging the image of every Nigerian who travels, studies, works, does business, or seeks opportunities abroad.”
He said the potential consequences extended to Nigerian students applying to foreign universities, professionals seeking employment, entrepreneurs looking for overseas partners, and millions of citizens whose prospects could be affected by perceptions of their country.
“Political competition is legitimate, but there must be a line that every responsible politician must refuse to cross,” Agbese argued.
The lawmaker urged the Trump administration to examine both the evidence being presented and the political interests behind the campaign, arguing that the Nigeria-US relationship was too important to be reduced to an extension of Nigeria’s approaching 2027 presidential contest.
“America and Nigeria have a relationship that is far bigger than the ambitions of desperate politicians,” he said, adding that bilateral relations should be driven by security, trade, investment, and development rather than opposition-sponsored political campaigns.
His concerns echo an emerging argument among some political and public affairs commentators that whatever legitimate questions remain about Tinubu’s past, the decision to internationalise the controversy through paid lobbying raises separate questions about sovereignty and the appropriate boundaries of domestic political competition.
PRP national leader and former presidential adviser Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed has questioned the wisdom of using an American political lobbying operation to pursue decades-old records for presentation to the US political establishment, warning against a political culture that increasingly looks abroad to settle domestic disputes.
The underlying concern among critics of the strategy is that Nigerian politicians may ultimately weaken the sovereignty they seek to exercise if domestic political legitimacy increasingly becomes something to be won or lost in Washington rather than principally before Nigerian voters and institutions.
Legal practitioner and public affairs analyst Evans Ufeli has similarly drawn attention to the political and institutional implications of seeking foreign intervention over matters arising from historical American court and law-enforcement records, even as he maintains the importance of transparency and public accountability.
The debate is by no means one-sided.
Atiku’s supporters and other critics of the Tinubu administration argue that Nigeria’s international image cannot be protected by suppressing legitimate questions about the background of its President. From their perspective, disclosure of authentic US government records is a transparency issue, and the nationality of the institutions holding those documents does not make efforts to obtain them illegitimate.
They contend that if the records ultimately contain nothing damaging, their disclosure should strengthen rather than diminish the President’s position.
Phrank Shaibu, Atiku’s spokesman, specifically accused the Presidency of attacking the messenger rather than addressing questions raised by historical records, particularly the widely reported $460,000 forfeiture in the United States.
Von Batten-Montague-York itself has questioned a February 4, 2003 letter attributed to the American Consulate in Lagos stating that an FBI records check found no criminal arrest records, warrants, or orders for Tinubu, pointing vaguely to typographical and grammatical errors in the document as grounds for questioning its authenticity.
That argument has been rejected by Tinubu’s supporters, who say a civil forfeiture proceeding is not synonymous with a criminal conviction and insist that political lobbying cannot transform historical allegations into a criminal judgement.
Lagos-based public affairs commentator Olufemi Aduwo yesterday described the Washington campaign as lacking actionable legal substance, arguing that the documents being circulated have been publicly discussed for years and that lobbying American political officials cannot manufacture a criminal conviction where none exists.
Another commentator, Abdullahi Adam Usman, told KTH Daily in Minna, Niger State, that there appear to be attempts to portray Nigeria as degenerating into a “narco-state” under Tinubu, arguing that such a grave characterisation requires evidence linking the President personally to any real narcotics networks rather than reliance on unproven decades-old allegations.
The controversy has also attracted scrutiny because Von Batten-Montague-York is not acting as an independent investigative organisation but as a paid lobbyist for one of Tinubu’s principal political opponents.
Documents filed under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act show that Atiku engaged the firm on a contract reportedly worth $1.2 million annually to strengthen his reputational standing in the United States and, among other objectives, “counterbalance” narratives advanced by the Nigerian government.
The firm subsequently said it had begun presenting officials of the Trump administration, Congress, and congressional staff with Department of Justice material relating to allegations surrounding Tinubu, saying some American officials were previously unaware of them.
The Presidency has portrayed the operation as a politically funded search for damaging material ahead of the 2027 presidential election rather than an impartial quest for accountability.
The State House’s latest intervention also provided a detailed account of the litigation itself.
According to Onanuga, American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan submitted FOIA requests to several US government agencies in 2022 seeking records concerning Tinubu and commenced Civil Action No. 23-1816 in the District of Columbia in 2023 after agencies withheld some records or declined to confirm or deny their existence.
Tinubu was subsequently allowed to step into the proceedings.
The Presidency said the court granted summary judgement in favour of the CIA, Executive Office for United States Attorneys, Department of State, Department of the Treasury, and Internal Revenue Service after the agencies relied on various protections under American law, leaving aspects involving the FBI and DEA for further determination.
The FBI and DEA eventually produced 399 pages, with portions withheld or redacted.
According to the Presidency, the agencies have defended those redactions on several grounds, including protection of grand jury proceedings, attorney-client and attorney-work-product privileges, personal privacy, confidential sources, and law-enforcement investigative techniques.
Tinubu, through his lawyers, has separately asserted privacy protections available under FOIA Exemption 7(C).
The Presidency said Greenspan has until September 11 to respond to processes filed by the defendants and Tinubu, while the FBI, DEA, and the President have until September 18 to reply to any further filing by Greenspan.
It stressed that the ultimate decision rests with US District Judge Beryl A. Howell — not Nigeria’s government, Atiku, Tinubu’s political supporters, or the Washington lobbyists.
“The release or withholding of records under FOIA does not, by itself, establish criminal liability,” the Presidency said.
Beyond the courtroom arguments, however, the dispute is rapidly developing into a wider debate over how far Nigerian politicians should go in seeking international leverage against domestic opponents.
Critics of the lobbying strategy argue that Nigeria’s politicians have every right to expose wrongdoing, demand transparency, and challenge public officials, but warn that portraying the country before foreign governments as institutionally criminal could carry reputational consequences long after the 2027 election has been decided.
For Agbese, the political contest should ultimately return to where he believes it belongs — before the Nigerian electorate.
“Let Nigerians decide their leadership. If anybody believes the President has failed, take that argument to the Nigerian people and let the ballot determine it,” he said.
“Do not outsource our democracy to Washington, London, or anywhere else. Nigeria belongs to Nigerians, and our political battles must not become a source of hardship or embarrassment for our people at home and abroad.”
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