The United States of America Government has refused to make public past records of President Bola Tinubu.
The government, through its law enforcement agencies, maintained its ground that Nigerians have no right to President Tinubu’s past records.
According to information posted by a journalist, David Hundeyin on his Twitter page, the US security agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in a Memorandum furnished before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, opposed motion for summary judgment in the request for disclosure of Tinubu’s records.
The court had in 2023 refused an emergency application seeking to force the top US law enforcement agencies to hasten the release of confidential information on the Nigerian President.
It was disclosed that the three US agencies had filed their defence against the summary judgment concerning Tinubu’s drug trafficking investigation records.
Hundeyin revealed that the CIA, FBI, and DEA had on Monday filed a memorandum kicking against his motion for summary judgment in the FOIA disclosure case about President Tinubu’s drug trafficking investigation records, before the US federal court, where he sought to have the redactions removed from the (partially released) files.
The CIA was said to have effectively confirmed that Nigeria’s sitting president is an active CIA asset through its filing.
Giving reasons for its rejection of the motion, the CIA argued it was trying to guarantee the safety of those that have their records with it.
Releasing confidential information of individuals, according to CIA, puts the lives of every person that has relationship with the individual at risk.
For the CIA, confirming or denying the existence of records on a particular foreign national, like Tinubu, reasonably could be expected to cause damage to U.S. national security by indicating whether or not the CIA maintained any human intelligence sources related to Tinubu, and identifying any access or lack of access any such sources had to intelligence concerning him.
It then insisted its opposal to full, unredacted disclosure of the DEA’s Bola Tinubu heroin trafficking investigation records.
It expressed its belief that while Nigerians have a right to be informed about what their government is up to, they lack right to know what their president is up to.
