Where the law permits disclosure, the public should have access to the facts and be allowed to draw its own conclusions. Tinubu is Nigeria’s serving president, records concerning the holder of the country’s highest elected office inevitably carry an elevated public interest.
By Roy Ofori | African Heritage Global Affairs Editor
NEW YORK – The African Democratic Congress–Diaspora Network (ADC-DN) has thrown its institutional weight behind the lawful disclosure of United States government records relating to Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, arguing that legitimate concerns over privacy and public safety should not become a blanket basis for withholding information that American law otherwise permits to be released.
In an official position endorsed by its 7th Geopolitical Zone leadership, the diaspora arm of the opposition party said its intervention should not be interpreted as a judgment on Tinubu’s guilt or innocence. Rather, it framed the controversy as a test of transparency, due process and the proper application of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The statement comes amid renewed attention to Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Civil Action No. 23-1816 (BAH), pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Transparency advocate Aaron Greenspan has sought records from U.S. agencies concerning historical federal investigations involving Tinubu. Recent reporting says Tinubu’s lawyers have opposed disclosure of records they argue may lawfully be withheld or redacted.
At the heart of ADC-DN’s position is a distinction that could prove important both legally and politically: disclosure does not necessarily mean unrestricted disclosure.
The organisation acknowledged that FOIA permits federal agencies to protect information where release would improperly invade personal privacy, expose confidential sources, reveal protected investigative methods or create legally recognised risks to individuals.
But it argues that those protections should be applied to the information that qualifies for exemption rather than automatically shielding an entire collection of records when non-exempt material can reasonably be separated.
“The law should take its course, and every reasonably segregable record that is not lawfully exempt from disclosure should be released,” ADC-DN said.
That position broadly reflects FOIA’s principle of segregability: agencies are generally required to release reasonably segregable non-exempt portions of records even when other portions may lawfully be withheld.
Court ruling changed the legal landscape
The dispute took a significant turn in April 2025 when U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration could not maintain their Glomar responses the practice of neither confirming nor denying the existence of certain records in relation to the relevant requests concerning Tinubu.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s own summary of the ruling confirms that the court found the FBI and DEA’s Glomar positions could not stand after earlier official disclosures concerning the investigation. The ruling did not, however, amount to an order that every underlying document must automatically be released without consideration of applicable FOIA exemptions.
That distinction is central to the ADC-DN intervention.
The organisation is calling instead for what it describes as a “carefully redacted and legally supervised disclosure process” protecting names, sources, investigative methods or other information where U.S. law requires protection, while releasing portions that do not qualify for exemption.
The party’s diaspora leadership also cautioned against treating the mere existence of investigative material as proof of criminal wrongdoing.
“This position is not a declaration of guilt or innocence,” the statement said, adding that investigative records, by themselves, should not be presented as evidence of guilt.
That restraint gives the ADC-DN position a notably different character from some of the partisan rhetoric surrounding the controversy in Nigeria.
A question bigger than Tinubu
For ADC-DN, however, the matter extends beyond the individual at the centre of the litigation.
Tinubu is Nigeria’s serving president, and the organisation argues that records concerning the holder of the country’s highest elected office inevitably carry an elevated public interest.
Its position therefore rests on four demands: respect for the independence of the U.S. judiciary and the FOIA process; protection of confidential sources, personal safety and legitimate law-enforcement methods; disclosure of reasonably segregable non-exempt records; and rejection of both political sensationalism and unnecessary blanket secrecy.
The formulation is politically significant.
ADC-DN is not asking an American court to determine Nigerian political questions, nor is it demanding that statutory FOIA protections be discarded. Instead, it is asking the U.S. legal system to apply its own transparency laws fully including their protections and their disclosure obligations.
The organisation summed up its case in a line likely to become the central message of its campaign on the issue:
“Where the law permits disclosure, the public should have access to the facts and be allowed to draw its own conclusions.”
For a country where questions surrounding public officials too often become contests between partisan accusation and institutional secrecy, that may ultimately be the more consequential argument.
The question before Washington is not what Nigerians should think about Bola Tinubu.
It is what the law says they are entitled to know.
Roy Ofori
African Heritage Global Affairs Editor
