Tinubu’s Lawyers Admit Errors In U.S. Court Filing Over Records Of 1990s Drug Probe

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s lawyers have acknowledged errors in an earlier filing before a United States federal court and asked permission to replace it with an amended version.

The lawyers said the earlier filing contained incorrect references concerning the year 1993, Tinubu’s public office and a comparison involving student enrolment.

The request was contained in a motion filed on October 1, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the ongoing Freedom of Information Act case brought by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan.

The case, Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys et al., Civil Action No. 23-1816 (BAH), concerns Greenspan’s efforts to obtain records from U.S. government agencies concerning Tinubu and others.

In the motion, titled “Motion to Amend Response Brief [DE 98],” Tinubu’s lawyers asked the court to allow them to file an amended response to Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment.

They said the corrections were needed specifically in Part 1.c of their earlier response.

“The point of part 1.c is that the underlying investigative events that transpired in 1988-1992 occurred decades before the Intervenor was elected to the Presidency of Nigeria,” the lawyers said.

However, they acknowledged that the point had been expressed “inadequately and incorrectly” regarding public office and 1993.

They also acknowledged a separate error involving a comparison between the age of the investigative records and student enrolment.

The lawyers said the comparison was incorrect because the student-enrolment event occurred even before the decades-old events being discussed.

“Both issues occurred during the drafting and revising process by the undersigned counsel, occurred unintendedly, and were not found and edited prior to filing,” they said.

They added that Greenspan subsequently identified both errors in his reply.

Despite the corrections, Tinubu’s lawyers stressed that they were not changing the substance of their legal argument.

“In the proposed amended response, the substance of the argument in part 1.c remains unchanged,” they said.

The amended argument maintains that Tinubu’s privacy interests in records relating to events from decades ago should not disappear simply because he later became President of Nigeria.

The lawyers also said they had discussed the proposed correction with Greenspan and his lawyers before filing the motion.

“Plaintiff indicated that he does not oppose the correction of the brief,” the filing states.

Tinubu’s lawyers therefore asked the court to allow the amended response to replace their earlier filing, identified as Document 98.

They also attached a proposed order for the judge to grant the request.

The attached document is expressly labelled “[Proposed] ORDER” and contains a blank space for the United States District Judge’s signature. Therefore, the documents supplied do not by themselves establish that the judge had already granted the motion.

The amended filing itself contains Tinubu’s substantive arguments against Greenspan’s request for additional FBI and DEA records.

Among other things, the lawyers argue that the disputed information is protected by FOIA’s law-enforcement privacy exemption and the Privacy Act.

They also argue that the records concern events that occurred before Tinubu became president and that his current office does not remove his privacy rights.

The correction motion does not amount to an admission of wrongdoing by Tinubu. Rather, it is an acknowledgment by his lawyers that portions of their earlier legal filing contained drafting or factual errors which they want to correct while maintaining the same underlying legal position.

Greenspan has asked a federal court in Washington, D.C., to order the FBI, DEA and Executive Office for US Attorneys to release without redaction records relating to a 1990s narcotics investigation that he says identified Nigeria’s President Tinubu as a subject.

The case also involves records from a 1993 U.S. civil forfeiture proceeding concerning about $460,000 linked to Tinubu.

Tinubu has denied any wrongdoing.

Greenspan, an American researcher, IT expert and founder of the legal transparency platform PlainSite, made the request in a series of filings in his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the US agencies. (SaharaReporters)