Every political myth has a birth certificate, and eventually someone asks to see it.
For three decades, Bola Tinubu has been sold to Nigerians as the Jagaban: the strategist, the kingmaker, the man who understood money and power better than anyone in the room. Myths like that survive on one condition. Nobody gets to read the file.
In Washington, somebody is reading the file.
What the record actually says
Let me separate the record from the rumour, because the record is damaging enough on its own.
In 1993, there was a civil forfeiture proceeding in the United States involving roughly $460,000 that Aaron Greenspan links to Tinubu. That proceeding did not come from a FOIA lawsuit or social media. It sits in the public court record.
Thirty years later, Greenspan filed Freedom of Information Act requests with American agencies. The FBI and DEA answered with the oldest trick in the bureaucratic book: they would neither confirm nor deny that any records existed. In April 2025, Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the FBI and DEA’s earlier refusal to confirm or deny whether they had records relating to Tinubu was improper. She ordered them to search and process the records.
Since then, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has personally entered an American courtroom. He did not come to clear his name. He came to ask the court to deny Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment and allow the FBI and DEA to maintain redactions and withholdings, citing his privacy.
Read that again. A sitting president, with the full machinery of a sovereign state behind him, is asking a foreign judge to keep Nigerians from learning what American law enforcement wrote about him in the 1990s.
A man with nothing to hide does not hire lawyers to hide it.
The newest chapter
On 9 September 2026, Greenspan went further. He asked Judge Howell for permission to question Tinubu and obtain documents from DCI Group AZ, L.L.C., a Washington public affairs firm registered as an agent of the Nigerian government, over repeated cyberattacks on his website.
To be precise, as I always am: Greenspan does not accuse Tinubu of ordering the attacks, and no court has made such a finding. But Nigerians are entitled to ask why a FOIA case about thirty-year-old files now involves a paid Washington lobbying firm, a hacked transparency website and a president’s lawyers saying no.
What I will not pretend is proven
I hold myself to a standard the Presidency does not.
The official record gives Tinubu’s age as 74. Many Nigerians dispute his name, age, schooling, and biography. I have asked those questions myself. But questions must be answered with documents, not with shouting.
INEC declared Tinubu winner of the 2023 election with 8,794,726 votes. Those who believe that election was compromised have every right to say so, test the evidence, and fight for reform. Allegation, however strongly held, is not fact. I will not blur that line, because blurring lines is how this government operates.
The FOIA case is a civil disclosure dispute. It is not a criminal prosecution. Forfeiture is not a conviction.
But here is my contention, and I stand by it. Fighting to keep the file sealed is itself a statement. Every privacy motion filed in Washington tells Nigerians more than any press release from Abuja.
My position
Mr President, resign.
Nigeria does not need an emperor, a demigod or a political family business. It needs institutions strong enough to outlive whoever sleeps in Aso Rock.
The police, the DSS, the military and the civil service belong to the Federal Republic. They do not belong to Bola Tinubu, to the APC, to the opposition or to any dynasty in waiting. No officer, no soldier, and no young Nigerian should bleed to protect one man’s second-term ambition.
That ambition will be decided in 2027, through the ballot and the courts. Nigerians must demand that the process be transparent, lawful, and watched by the whole world.
The Solution demands:
1. The Presidency should withdraw its intervention in Greenspan v. FBI/DEA and consent to the release of the records.
2. The President should publish his Code of Conduct asset declarations in full.
3. Every contract with foreign lobbying firms paid with Nigerian public money should be published, with amounts and deliverables.
4. The National Assembly should hold open hearings on the 1993 forfeiture and the government’s conduct in the US case.
5. The security services should publicly commit to political neutrality before the 2027 election.
The age of “trust the powerful man” is over.
Documents can be demanded. Court records can be read. Official claims can be challenged. Presidents can be questioned.
That is what every political myth fears most: receipts.
Nigeria belongs to Nigerians.
*Disclaimer: The 1993 matter was a civil forfeiture proceeding, not a criminal conviction. Bola Tinubu has not been charged with or convicted of any crime in the United States and has denied wrongdoing. Statements of opinion are clearly identified as mine and are published under Swedish press freedom protections.
