The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have requested an additional 90 days from a United States District Court to release investigative documents related to an alleged drug case involving Nigerian President Bola Tinubu.
This request was disclosed in a Joint Status Report filed on Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The case involves allegations linking Tinubu to a drug trafficking network in Chicago during the 1990s. The plaintiff, Aaron Greenspan—an American legal transparency advocate and founder of the platform PlainSite—opposed the extension and proposed a 14-day deadline for the agencies to produce the requested records.
Judge Beryl Howell of the District Court had previously directed the FBI and DEA to provide an update on the search and release of non-exempt documents by May 2, 2025.
Between 2022 and 2023, Greenspan filed 12 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking information related to the Chicago-based drug ring, which allegedly involved four individuals, including Tinubu.
The FBI and DEA had earlier issued “Glomar responses,” declining to confirm or deny the existence of the requested documents. However, the court ruled such responses inappropriate in this case.
In the latest filing dated May 1, 2025, the FBI and DEA cited the need for additional time to complete their searches and process the relevant records.