Washington, D.C. — Lawyers representing Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu have acknowledged errors in an earlier court filing before a United States federal court and requested permission to replace it with an amended version.
In a motion filed on October 1, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, counsel for Tinubu asked the court to allow an amended response to a motion for summary judgment filed by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan.
The case, styled Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys et al., Civil Action No. 23-1816 (BAH), is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in which Greenspan seeks records from U.S. government agencies, including the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), relating to Tinubu and others.
The lawyers identified the errors in Part 1.c of their previous response brief. They stated that the section was intended to demonstrate that the underlying investigative events, which occurred between 1988 and 1992, took place decades before Tinubu was elected President of Nigeria. However, they acknowledged that the point was expressed “inadequately and incorrectly” with respect to references to the year 1993 and Tinubu’s public office.
They also admitted a separate error involving a comparison between the age of the investigative records and a student-enrolment event. The lawyers said the comparison was inaccurate because the student-enrolment event occurred even earlier than the decades-old events under discussion.
“Both issues occurred during the drafting and revising process by the undersigned counsel, occurred unintendedly, and were not found and edited prior to filing,” the lawyers stated in the motion. They noted that Greenspan subsequently identified both errors in his reply brief.
Despite the corrections, Tinubu’s legal team emphasised that the substance of their argument remains unchanged. “In the proposed amended response, the substance of the argument in part 1.c remains unchanged,” they said. The amended filing continues to assert that Tinubu retains privacy interests in records relating to events from decades ago and that those interests do not disappear simply because he later became President of Nigeria.
The lawyers further stated that they had conferred with Greenspan and his counsel before filing the motion. According to the filing, Greenspan indicated that he does not oppose the correction of the brief. Tinubu’s team therefore asked the court to permit the amended response to replace the earlier filing (identified as Document 98) and attached a proposed order for the judge’s signature. As of the latest available information, the documents do not show that the court has yet ruled on the request.
The broader case centres on Greenspan’s efforts to obtain unredacted records related to a 1990s narcotics investigation that he says identified Tinubu as a subject, as well as materials connected to a 1993 U.S. civil forfeiture proceeding involving approximately $460,000 linked to Tinubu. Tinubu has denied any wrongdoing. The Nigerian Presidency has previously described the litigation as a civil records-disclosure dispute under the FOIA and not a criminal case against the president. No U.S. court has found Tinubu guilty of criminal wrongdoing in connection with the matter.
Tinubu’s lawyers maintain that any withheld or redacted information is protected by FOIA’s law-enforcement privacy exemption (Exemption 7(C)) and the Privacy Act, and that his current public office does not extinguish privacy rights arising from events that predate his presidency.
The motion to amend represents an acknowledgment of drafting and factual inaccuracies in the lawyers’ prior filing rather than any alteration of their core legal position opposing additional disclosure of the contested records. The case remains pending before U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell.
(This report is based on court filings and contemporaneous news accounts of the October 1, 2026 motion. The outcome of the request to amend remains pending.)
About the Author
