A United States-based political advisory and lobbying firm, Von Batten-Montague-York, has rejected the Nigerian Presidency’s account of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation involving records on President Bola Tinubu in a US federal court.
The firm accused the Presidency of making misleading claims about the nature of the proceedings and said it was preparing to intervene in the case before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Von Batten-Montague-York disclosed this in a statement published on its verified X account on Friday, a day after the Presidency issued its own clarification on the matter.
The controversy followed renewed attention to a FOIA lawsuit seeking records from US government agencies relating to Tinubu.
In its statement on Thursday, the Presidency, through the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, described the case as a civil dispute over access to government records rather than a criminal proceeding against the Nigerian president.
Onanuga said the case, identified as Civil Action No. 23-1816, originated from FOIA requests submitted in 2022 by Aaron Greenspan to several US government agencies for records concerning Tinubu.
According to the Presidency, some agencies withheld records while others declined to confirm or deny whether such records existed, leading Greenspan to institute proceedings before the federal court in Washington, D.C., in 2023.
The Presidency further stated that Tinubu was subsequently allowed to participate in the proceedings as an intervenor.
It explained that several US agencies relied on the “Glomar defence”, a legal mechanism that permits government agencies to refuse to confirm or deny the existence of investigative records in circumstances where disclosure could compromise protected interests.
The Presidency said the court subsequently granted summary judgment in favour of the CIA, the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, the Department of State, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service, effectively removing those agencies from the proceedings.
However, Von Batten-Montague-York disputed the Presidency’s presentation of the matter, accusing the administration of attempting to “mislead the world”.
The firm said it had notified Greenspan, the US Department of Justice and Tinubu’s legal representatives of its intention to seek permission from the court to submit an amicus curiae brief addressing the president’s claimed privacy interests.
It said its proposed intervention would focus on whether Tinubu’s privacy claim should carry the same weight after the Nigerian Presidency itself publicly discussed the litigation and the records at issue.
The firm argued that the Presidency’s decision to address the records publicly could undermine the strength of any privacy protection being asserted before the US court under Exemption 7(C) of the FOIA.
More controversially, the firm alleged that the records in question concern what it described as “alleged heroin trafficking records” and accused the Presidency of making statements that it characterised as “obvious untruths” regarding FBI, DEA and court records.
“You cannot claim privacy before the Court and then blatantly misrepresent the records to the public,” the firm said.
“That might work in Nigeria; it does not work in the United States,” it added.