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Tinubu Denies Certified US Court Documents on Drug Indictment
The presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, has reacted to the certified judgment documents released by the Chicago, US court, where he was indicted of drug dealings and money laundering in 1993.
The certified US court judgment documents surfaced and have been making the rounds on the internet since Tuesday, showing that a US District Court indicted the former Lagos State governor for drug dealings and money laundering.
The certified court documents indicated that Tinubu was a drug lord who entered a plea bargain in which he voluntarily agreed to forfeit his assets to American authorities in 1993 instead of going to trial.
Reacting to the circulation of the documents, the spokesman of the APC presidential campaign, Bayo Onanuga, on Wednesday described the documents in circulation as a “campaign of calumny” adding that “The Muckrakers are back in business.”
Onanuga on his Facebook page wrote, “The Muckrakers back in business.
“The Tinubu traducers on Tuesday returned to their usual campaign of calumny, this time waking up the carcass of a drug allegation in America that was buried in 1993.
“Long after the campaign failed in 2003, it resurfaced weeks to the primary election of the All Progressives Congress. The opponents thought it was lethal enough to make the APC disqualify Tinubu from the race.
“It failed spectacularly and Tinubu went on to win the primary with a landslide. The muckrakers are back again with the same story, dressed as ‘certified true copy’ from the U.S. Court.
“The campaign’s media and publicity director, Bayo Onanuga had perused the new document and dismissed it as the same old tale. It is as dead as a dodo”, Onanuga told a news medium on Tuesday and made reference to a section of the campaign’s FAQ’s manual.
“One of the unconscionable and wicked lies peddled by political opponents about Bola Ahmed Tinubu was to paint him erroneously as a drug baron.
“The accusation arose out of an investigation by FBI agent Kevin Moss of Tinubu and Compass Investment and Finance accounts at First Heritage Bank and Citi- Bank in the U.S.
“On January 10, 1992, Mr Kevin Moss requested and obtained a court order to freeze the accounts.
“On January 13, 1992, Mr Moss telephoned Tinubu in Nigeria to justify the amounts in the accounts, running into $1.4 million. Part of the money was said to have been deposited by two Nigerians, being investigated for drug offences.
“After the telephone conversation, Tinubu instructed his lawyer in the US to file
a lawsuit against the order freezing his accounts.
“This dragged on till 15 September 1993, when an agreement was reached for an out of court settlement. Judge John A Nordberg, of the US district court for the Northern District of Illinois, read out the agreement reached by the two parties. Part of the funds, $460,000 was seized by the government.
“The FBI never charged Tinubu with any drug offence; the case did not go on trial. Tinubu was never convicted. And he was never barred from entering the United States.
“In 2003, ten years after, when the PDP opponents wanted to use the shuttered allegation to disqualify Tinubu from running for a second term in Lagos, the Inspector General of Police, Tafa Balogun made an enquiry with the American Consulate on Tinubu’s status.
“The Consulate gave Tinubu a clean bill in a reply by the Legal Attache, Michael H. Bonner.
“The letter read: “Our sincerest greetings to you and all of the law enforcement personnel in the Nigeria Police Force, whose continued assistance is very much appreciated. In relation to your letter, dated February 3, 2003, reference number SR. 3000/IGPSEC/ABJ/VOL. 24/287, regarding Governor Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a records check of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) National Crime Information Centre (NCIC) was conducted.
“The results of the checks were negative for any criminal arrest records, wants or warrants for Bola Ahmed Tinubu (DOB 29 March 1952). For information of your department, NCIC is a very centralised information centre that maintains the records of every criminal arrest and conviction within the United States and its territories.”
“Almost thirty years after the allegation was discharged and the case declared dead, Tinubu’s opponents keep waking up its corpse, in futile efforts to malign him.”
SaharaReporters
President Bola Tinubu has nominated Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas, the immediate past sole administrator of Rivers State and a former Chief of Naval Staff, as a non-career ambassador.
Tinubu also nominated Ita Enang, a former senator; Chioma Ohakim, former First Lady of Imo State; and Abdulrahman Dambazau, former Minister of Interior and ex-Chief of Army Staff, as non-career ambassadors.
The United States Department of State on Wednesday announced that it is outlining new measures to address violence against Christians in Nigeria and other countries.
The policy, according to a statement released by the department, targets radical Islamic terrorists, Fulani ethnic militias, and other actors responsible for killings and attacks on religious communities.
“The United States is taking decisive action in response to the mass killings and attacks on Christians carried out by radical Islamic terrorists, Fulani militias, and other violent groups in Nigeria and beyond,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement.
According to the statement, a new policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the State Department to restrict visas for individuals who have “directed, authorised, significantly supported, participated in, or carried out violations of religious freedom,” and, when appropriate, extend those “restrictions to their immediate family members.”
The briefing, led by House Appropriations Vice Chair and National Security Subcommittee Chairman Mario Díaz-Balart, included members of the House Appropriations and House Foreign Affairs Committees, as well as religious freedom experts.
Participants included Representatives Robert Aderholt, Riley Moore, Brian Mast, Chris Smith, US Commission on International Religious Freedom Chair Vicky Hartzler, Alliance Defending Freedom International’s Sean Nelson, and Dr Ebenezer Obadare of the Council on Foreign Relations.
President Bola Tinubu recently approved Nigeria’s delegation to the new US–Nigeria Joint Working Group, formed to implement security agreements from high-level talks in Washington led by National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu.
The move follows growing concerns over terrorism, banditry, and targeted attacks on Christians in Nigeria, prompting increased US scrutiny and warnings about the protection of vulnerable faith communities.
On November 20, the US House Subcommittee on Africa opened a public hearing to review Trump’s redesignation of Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern, placing the country under heightened scrutiny for alleged religious-freedom violations.
Lawmakers examined the potential consequences of the designation, which could pave the way for sanctions against Nigerian officials found complicit in religious persecution.
The Punch
United States of America lawmakers have sharply contradicted the Nigerian government’s position on the ongoing massacres in the country, describing the violence as “escalating,” “targeted,” and overwhelmingly directed at Christians during a rare joint congressional briefing on Tuesday.
The closed-door session – convened by House Appropriations, Vice Chair Mario Díaz-Balart, as part of a Trump-ordered investigation – examined recent killings and what Congress calls Abuja’s “deeply inadequate” response.
President Trump has asked lawmakers, led by Reps. Riley Moore and Tom Cole, to compile a report on persecution of Nigerian Christians and has even floated the possibility of U.S. military action against Islamist groups responsible for the attacks.
At the briefing, Vicky Hartzler, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, warned that “religious freedom [is] under siege” in Nigeria, citing mass abductions of schoolchildren and assaults in which “radical Muslims kill entire Christian villages [and] burn churches.” She said abuses were “rampant” and “violent,” claiming Christians are targeted “at a 2.2 to 1 rate” compared with Muslims.
While acknowledging Nigeria’s recent move to reassign 100,000 police officers from VIP protection, Hartzler said the country is entering a “coordinated and deeply troubling period of escalated violence.” She urged targeted sanctions, visa bans, asset freezes and tighter conditions on U.S. aid, insisting Abuja must retake villages seized from Christian communities so displaced widows and children can return home.
The strongest rebuke came from Dr. Ebenezer Obadare of the Council on Foreign Relations, who dismissed Abuja’s narrative that the killings are not religiously motivated. He called the idea that extremists attack Muslims and Christians equally a “myth,” stressing the groups operate “for one reason and one reason only: religion.” Higher Muslim casualty figures, he argued, reflect geography, not equal targeting.
Obadare described Boko Haram as fundamentally anti-democratic and accused the Nigerian military of being “too corrupt and incompetent” to defeat jihadist networks without external pressure. He urged Washington to push Nigeria to disband armed religious militias, confront security-sector corruption and respond swiftly to early warnings.
Sean Nelson of ADF International called Nigeria “the deadliest country in the world for Christians,” claiming more Christians are killed there than in all other countries combined and at a rate “five times” higher than Muslims when adjusted for population. He said extremists also kill Muslims who reject violent ideologies, undermining Abuja’s argument that the crisis is driven mainly by crime or communal disputes.
He pressed for tighter oversight on U.S. aid, recommending that some assistance be routed through faith-based groups to avoid corruption. Without “transparency and outside pressure,” he said, “nothing changes.”
Díaz-Balart criticised the Biden administration’s reversal of Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” in 2021, saying the decision had “clearly deadly consequences.” Lawmakers from the Appropriations, Foreign Affairs and Financial Services committees signaled further oversight actions as they prepare the Trump-directed report.
Hartzler pointed to recent comments by Nigeria’s Speaker of the House acknowledging a “coordinated and deeply troubling period of escalated violence,” calling it a rare moment of candor. She also welcomed the redeployment of police officers as “a promising start after years of neglect.”
But she stressed that these gestures are far from sufficient, insisting the Nigerian government must demonstrate a real commitment to “quell injustice,” act swiftly on early warnings, and embrace transparency.
The Nigerian Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment, according to source.
