A federal judge in the United States has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to ignore requests for files on President Bola Tinubu, saying no evidence the organisation collected any intelligence on the Nigerian leader. 

Similarly, Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Washington D.C. said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have already released documents in their possession, but said they can look further to see if they have anything left that would be in public interest in their archives. 

“Given that plaintiff has failed to show that the CIA has ever officially acknowledged the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to his FOIA request, the CIA’s Glomar response must be sustained,” Ms Howell said in her April 8, 2025, decision. Glomar response involves federal authorities declining to confirm or deny the existence of information relating to an enquiry. Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have used the mechanism to avoid weighing in on a raging controversy for decades.

Consequently, Ms Howell said the CIA should be excused from the freedom of information lawsuit filed by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan in collaboration with Nigerian journalist David Hundeyin. 

The decision, which should relieve the Nigerian leader, followed years of litigation for Mr Tinubu’s records by the duo, with the FBI and other U.S. agencies disclosing what they had in their possession in a series of document dumps between 2023 and 2024. 

The FBI and sister agencies have already released files from their archives that showed Mr Tinubu was investigated for ties to narcotics business in the 1990s. The probe led to Mr Tinubu’s forfeiture of $460,000 in 1993, a scandal that dominated the 2023 presidential elections in Nigeria. 

Mr Tinubu, who has long denied any wrongdoing despite contrary evidence from U.S. authorities, was elected president even as the scandal raged nationwide. 

In her decision, Ms Howell said the FBI and other agencies, except the CIA, were reluctant to release files on Mr Tinubu but admitted all joint-status filings that showed the agencies complied with freedom of information enquiries and released all documents that they felt were relevant to whether or not Mr Tinubu was once a subject of their investigation. 

But if the FBI and others have information on Mr Tinubu that could be in the public interest, they should feel free to release them to Mr Greenspan, the judge said. 

“Accordingly, the FBI and DEA must search for and process non-exempt records responsive to the FOIA requests directed to these agencies,” she said. 

It was unclear whether or not the FBI has more documents other than what it has already released between 2023 and 2024. A spokesman for the bureau did not return a request seeking comments from The Gazette. The parties were ordered to file a joint update to the court by May 2, 2025.

A spokesman for the Nigerian presidency declined comments about the development.