Presidential spokesperson, Daniel Bwala, has rubbished the US court ruling that directed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other anti-drug agencies to release the records they have on President Bola Tinubu.

The ruling was delivered by Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, who said protecting the information from public disclosure is “neither logical nor plausible.”

He gave the order in response to a motion by one Aaron Greenspan who had accused the law enforcement agencies of violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Greenspan's enquiry may not be unconnected to the $460,000 Tinubu is said to have forfeited to the US government in 1993 after it was linked to narcotics trafficking.

Reacting, Bwala described the order as "mischievous and politically mechanised nonsense."

He stated, "They claim the order was given on Tuesday, but it never saw the light of the media until Sunday.

"There is nothing these opposition under the auspices of coalition for a wild goose chase cannot try to do to keep relevance."

Granting his request, Howell said the Glomer responses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) were “improper and must be lifted.”

He said, “The claim that the Glomar responses were necessary to protect this information from public disclosure is at this point neither logical nor plausible.”

Howell established that a FOIA requester may challenge the propriety of an agency’s Glomar response in two ways: first, by “challenging the agency’s assertion that confirming or denying the existence of any records would result in a cognisable harm under a FOIA exemption.”

Secondly, he said it has to be shown that the agency “has ‘officially acknowledged otherwise exempt information through prior disclosure,” meaning that the agency “has ‘waived its right to claim an exemption with respect to that information.”

In this case, the judge said Greenspan asserts both types of challenges to defendants’ Glomar responses: “The plaintiffs’ argument that (1) DEA has officially confirmed investigations of Agbele’s involvement in the drug trafficking ring, (2) the FBI and DEA have both officially confirmed investigations of Tinubu relating to the drug trafficking ring, (3) any privacy interests implicated by the FOIA requests to the FBI and DEA for records about Tinubu are overcome by the public interest in release of such information, and (4) the CIA has officially acknowledged records responsive to plaintiff’s FOIA request about Tinubu.”

The $460,000 forfeiture by Tinubu formed part of discussions during the 2023 presidential election, which Tinubu won by defeating former presidential candidates, Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar.