The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has confirmed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was investigated in connection with alleged drug-trafficking activities in the early 1990s.
The confirmation was contained in a sworn declaration filed by the FBI on August 28, 2026, before the US District Court for the District of Columbia as part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case seeking access to records relating to Tinubu.
In the declaration, the FBI stated that the records being sought were compiled during an investigation involving multiple individuals suspected of drug-trafficking crimes.
“The responsive records herein were compiled in furtherance of the FBI’s investigation of multiple individuals for drug trafficking crimes,” the agency said.
The FBI also noted that a US court had previously determined that there had been an official acknowledgement of an investigation involving Tinubu.
“The court has already determined that an official acknowledgement had been made of an investigation of Bola Tinubu,” the agency stated.
The latest filing followed an April 2025 ruling by US District Judge Beryl Howell, who ordered the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to stop using so-called “Glomar” responses to refuse to confirm or deny the existence of records concerning Tinubu.
Judge Howell had ruled that the agencies failed to establish sufficient privacy grounds to conceal the fact that Tinubu had been investigated.
She consequently ordered the agencies to process records requested under the FOIA, subject to applicable legal exemptions.
However, the ruling did not establish that Tinubu committed a drug-trafficking offence or that he was convicted of any crime.
The FOIA requests were filed by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan, who sought access to the “entire FBI file for Bola Ahmed Tinubu” as well as FBI Form 302 interview records involving Tinubu in FBI Case No. 245-IP-71386-UUUUUU between 1992 and 1993.
The requests were connected to a broader effort to obtain records relating to a Chicago heroin-trafficking operation investigated by US authorities during the early 1990s.
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The FBI has continued to withhold portions of the requested records, citing exemptions under US law relating to personal privacy, confidential sources, law-enforcement techniques and information that could potentially place individuals at risk.
The agency said it could not publicly disclose the full basis for some of the exemptions applied to the withheld records.
The latest court filing is expected to draw renewed attention to the long-running FOIA case and the US authorities’ investigation of individuals connected to the Chicago drug-trafficking probe in the early 1990s.
