By Emma Emeozor with agency report
Former vice president and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar’s political battle to further expose President Bola Tinubu’s alleged misdeeds while in the United States has suffered an unexpected setback as an emergency application filed by an American, Aaron Greenspan, failed to convince two major US law enforcement agencies, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to release the president’s confidential records.
Beryl Howell, judge of the District Court for the District of Columbia refused the application on Monday.
Greenspan had filed the suit in June under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Executive Office for US Attorneys, Department of State, FBI, CIA, Internal Revenue Service and Drug Enforcement Administration.
In his suit, Greenspan accused the law enforcement agencies of violating the FIOA by failing to release within the statutory time “documents relating to purported federal investigations into” President Tinubu and one Mueez Adegboyega Akande, who is now deceased.
According to the complainant, the records being requested were from the Northern District of Illinois and/or Northern District of Indiana “involving charging decisions” against Tinubu and Akande.
Greenspan’s grievances border on a case in 1993, when Tinubu was said to have forfeited $460,000 to the American government after authorities linked the funds to proceeds of narcotics trafficking.
Allegations of Tinubu’s forfeiture of the funds featured prominently at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal where Atiku and the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, challenged Tinubu’s eligibility to contest the election. The tribunal, in a unanimous decision, on September 6, dismissed the suits and confirmed Tinubu’s election valid in law.
But ahead of the Supreme Court’s hearing of Atiku’s case against Tinubu’s election on Monday in Abuja, Greenspan had, on Friday, made unrelenting efforts to seek the US court’s intervention to compel the FBI, the CIA and the other agencies to fast-track the process of releasing Tinubu’s records.
A seven-member panel of the Supreme Court in Abuja on Monday heard Atiku and Obi’s appeals seeking to overturn Tinubu’s election victory.
At the hearing, Atiku, through his lawyer, Chris Uche, sought to tender fresh evidence before the apex court against the president.
Court filings showed that the US court had denied Greenspan’s FOIA request “invoking FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(c), which protect information that would constitute unwarranted invasions of personal privacy and information compiled for law enforcement purposes that may constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of a third party.”
Declining the request, Howell said Greenspan did not meet the preconditions for granting his request.
“Plaintiff has failed even to attempt to argue how his request may overcome those exemptions and achieve a likelihood of success on the merits. This failure to address this important factor in his Emergency Motion weighs strongly in favour of denying his motion,” Howell said.
Citing a plethora of cases to buttress the preconditions, the judge noted that Greenspan must prove “that irreparable injury is likely in the absence of an injunction, rather than a mere possibility.
“Plaintiff falls far short of satisfying this standard. He has not supplied the court with any indication of a concrete, actual threat that 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 further explained that Greenspan’s 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.”
Therefore, “the balance of equities militates strongly in favour of denying this Emergency Motion.”
Howell said there was no need to consider Greenspan’s request for a hearing to “discuss even the most remote possibility of documents being produced before the October 31, 2023 [sic] chosen by defendants for themselves,
“For the foregoing reasons, it is hereby ordered that plaintiff’s Emergency Motion for a hearing to compel immediate document production, ECF No. 17 is denied. So ordered,” the judge said.