A United States-based lobbying firm, Von Batten-Montague-York, has announced fresh legal and administrative steps in its campaign to obtain records relating to historical allegations involving President Bola Tinubu.
The firm said it would submit a supplementary filing in a US federal court and refer what it described as a campaign of harassment by Nigerian officials to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
According to the firm, the additional court filing concerns a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case seeking access to FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) records. It alleged that Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo and presidential aides Bayo Onanuga and Sunday Dare had engaged in a coordinated effort to disrupt its advocacy activities.
The firm also said it had referred the alleged conduct to the FBI’s Washington Field Office for assessment over possible foreign interference, harassment or transnational repression. It stressed that the referral did not itself allege that a federal crime had been committed.
The development is significant because the dispute has moved beyond the question of access to historical US law-enforcement records and into a broader political and legal confrontation involving Nigerian officials and a US lobbying organisation.
Keyamo, however, dismissed the latest development, describing the FBI referral as a “storm in a teacup; journey to nowhere.”
The Presidency has also maintained that the proceedings concern access to government records and the application of FOIA exemptions, rather than establishing criminal liability against Tinubu. Court records reviewed in the broader dispute do not establish that Tinubu committed a drug-trafficking offence or was convicted of one.
