A US court has refused to release confidential Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records related to President Bola Tinubu.
The US Court for the District of Columbia ruled that only documents that do not directly mention the president will be released.
The suit was filed by investigative journalist David Hundeyin in collaboration with Aaron Greenspan. The plaintiffs argued that the public has a right to know about the president’s past and that the FBI records could shed light on his involvement in alleged criminal activity.
The FBI had previously agreed to release 2,500 documents related to President Tinubu. The documents were to be released in batches of 500 per month starting from October. However, the court’s ruling now means that only a fraction of these documents will be released.
Recall also that the court had on Tuesday rejected an emergency request on the release of the confidential information of Tinubu.
Declining the request, Beryl Howell, the district judge, said Greenspan did not meet the preconditions for granting a request of that nature.
“Plaintiff has failed even to attempt to argue how his request may overcome those exemptions and achieve a likelihood of success on the merits,” Howell said.
“This failure to address this important factor in his Emergency Motion weighs strongly in favour of denying his motion.
“Plaintiff falls far short of satisfying this standard. He has not supplied the court with any indication of a concrete, actual threat that he will suffer in the absence of an injunction.
“While his Emergency Motion states that a Nigerian Supreme Court hearing is scheduled to occur in the coming days, plaintiff cites no injury he will suffer that is in any way traceable to the relief requested in this motion.”
The judge added that the request “may be of a highly sensitive and private nature” and that “the subject of those documents, Bola A. Tinubu, has had no opportunity to protect his privacy interests in any such records”.
