THE FBI MUST ACCEPT THAT THE ERA OF SECRECY IS ENDING
By Kio Amachree
Letters from Stockholm
The FBI must come to its senses and recognise that its continuing legal manoeuvres over the Bola Tinubu records are damaging confidence in both American justice and US–Nigeria relations.
Nigeria’s 230 million citizens cannot be treated as though they have no right to ask questions about the background of their own president. These records concern events dating back more than three decades. The public is entitled to know what happened, what role Tinubu played, and why American agencies remain so determined to conceal significant portions of their files.
On August 20, 2026, the FBI asked the US District Court for permission to submit declarations ex parte and in camera in support of its renewed motion for summary judgment. In plain language, the FBI wants to explain its reasons for withholding information privately to Judge Beryl Howell, without Aaron Greenspan or the public seeing its full argument.
The FBI relies partly on FOIA Exemptions 7(E) and 7(F), claiming disclosure could reveal investigative techniques or endanger someone’s life or physical safety. Greenspan opposed this request after the parties conferred on August 19, making it a contested motion that Judge Howell must now decide.
After more than thirty years, the assertion that meaningful disclosure would create an unacceptable danger requires the most rigorous judicial scrutiny. It cannot become an indefinite licence for secrecy.
Many Nigerians now suspect that Tinubu may have been a valuable American intelligence or law-enforcement source. That remains an allegation and has not been established by the public record. But the FBI’s extraordinary resistance inevitably fuels that suspicion. Government agencies cannot behave as though these records contain matters of exceptional sensitivity and then expect the public to believe they contain nothing important.
If Tinubu cooperated with American authorities, Nigerians deserve to know the nature and extent of that cooperation. What information was provided? What arrangements, if any, were made? Did those arrangements influence decisions not to prosecute? Could any undisclosed relationship affect Nigeria’s sovereignty or its dealings with the United States?
These are legitimate questions—not conspiracy theories to be dismissed with another sealed declaration.
For accuracy, August 21 is a deadline in the summary-judgment briefing process, not an automatic date for the complete files to be released. Further briefing deadlines reportedly extend into September. The immediate dispute is whether the FBI may present part of its justification secretly before the court determines whether its withholding is lawful.
That distinction does not diminish the importance of this moment. It demonstrates that the fight for disclosure is continuing and that the FBI is still resisting full public scrutiny.
The United States must decide whether it stands for transparency and respect for the Nigerian people or for permanent secrecy surrounding one politically powerful individual. The present position is unsustainable. The longer the agencies resist, the stronger the public suspicion becomes.
The Nigerian people are informed, alert and determined to discover the truth. They will not be patronised, silenced or treated as subjects whose questions do not matter.
The era of secrecy must end. Let the court examine the FBI’s claims critically—and let the truth come out.
#TinubuFiles #FBI #AaronGreenspan #JudgeBerylHowell #FOIA #Nigeria #UnitedStates #USNigeriaRelations #Transparency #Accountability #RuleOfLaw #BolaTinubu #LettersFromStockholm #KioAmachree
THE FBI MUST ACCEPT THAT THE ERA OF SECRECY IS ENDING
By Kio Amachree
Letters from Stockholm
The FBI must come to its senses and recognise that its continuing legal manoeuvres over the Bola Tinubu records are damaging confidence in both American justice and US–Nigeria relations.
Nigeria’s 230 million citizens cannot be treated as though they have no right to ask questions about the background of their own president. These records concern events dating back more than three decades. The public is entitled to know what happened, what role Tinubu played, and why American agencies remain so determined to conceal significant portions of their files.
On August 20, 2026, the FBI asked the US District Court for permission to submit declarations ex parte and in camera in support of its renewed motion for summary judgment. In plain language, the FBI wants to explain its reasons for withholding information privately to Judge Beryl Howell, without Aaron Greenspan or the public seeing its full argument.
The FBI relies partly on FOIA Exemptions 7(E) and 7(F), claiming disclosure could reveal investigative techniques or endanger someone’s life or physical safety. Greenspan opposed this request after the parties conferred on August 19, making it a contested motion that Judge Howell must now decide.
After more than thirty years, the assertion that meaningful disclosure would create an unacceptable danger requires the most rigorous judicial scrutiny. It cannot become an indefinite licence for secrecy.
Many Nigerians now suspect that Tinubu may have been a valuable American intelligence or law-enforcement source. That remains an allegation and has not been established by the public record. But the FBI’s extraordinary resistance inevitably fuels that suspicion. Government agencies cannot behave as though these records contain matters of exceptional sensitivity and then expect the public to believe they contain nothing important.
If Tinubu cooperated with American authorities, Nigerians deserve to know the nature and extent of that cooperation. What information was provided? What arrangements, if any, were made? Did those arrangements influence decisions not to prosecute? Could any undisclosed relationship affect Nigeria’s sovereignty or its dealings with the United States?
These are legitimate questions—not conspiracy theories to be dismissed with another sealed declaration.
For accuracy, August 21 is a deadline in the summary-judgment briefing process, not an automatic date for the complete files to be released. Further briefing deadlines reportedly extend into September. The immediate dispute is whether the FBI may present part of its justification secretly before the court determines whether its withholding is lawful.
That distinction does not diminish the importance of this moment. It demonstrates that the fight for disclosure is continuing and that the FBI is still resisting full public scrutiny.
The United States must decide whether it stands for transparency and respect for the Nigerian people or for permanent secrecy surrounding one politically powerful individual. The present position is unsustainable. The longer the agencies resist, the stronger the public suspicion becomes.
The Nigerian people are informed, alert and determined to discover the truth. They will not be patronised, silenced or treated as subjects whose questions do not matter.
The era of secrecy must end. Let the court examine the FBI’s claims critically—and let the truth come out.
#TinubuFiles #FBI #AaronGreenspan #JudgeBerylHowell #FOIA #Nigeria #UnitedStates #USNigeriaRelations #Transparency #Accountability #RuleOfLaw #BolaTinubu #LettersFromStockholm #KioAmachree
AN OPEN LETTER TO KASH PATEL, DIRECTOR OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Letters from Stockholm
Dear Director Patel,
I write to you as a Nigerian of the diaspora, a Swedish citizen, and the founder of Worldview International, on behalf of millions of Nigerians at home and abroad who have watched your Bureau's conduct before Judge Beryl Howell with growing disbelief.
On August 20, 2026, your agency filed a motion asking the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for permission to explain, in secret, ex parte and in camera, why it continues to withhold records concerning Bola Ahmed Tinubu, records dating to 1992 and 1993, records connected to a Chicago heroin trafficking investigation, records a federal judge ordered you to process more than a year ago. You claim their release could endanger lives and reveal law enforcement techniques. Techniques from 1993, Director. Thirty-three years old. The rotary telephone was still in service.
So permit me to ask you the question every Nigerian is asking.
Why is Bola Tinubu's file more sacred to your Bureau than the Epstein files?
Your administration promised the American people transparency on Jeffrey Epstein, files in which your own President's name has reportedly appeared, alongside the names of some of the most powerful men in the Western world. That promise collapsed into memos, redactions and retreat. And yet here you are, three years into Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, deploying the full machinery of the Department of Justice, extension after extension, Glomar responses that Judge Howell ruled improper, sealed declarations, secret submissions, all to shield the file of a foreign head of state who, in 1993, forfeited 460,000 US dollars to your government in a civil action alleging the funds were proceeds of heroin trafficking.
He was never charged, you will say. Correct. He simply handed over the money and walked away. Innocent men do not ordinarily pay the United States Treasury nearly half a million dollars to make questions disappear. And your Bureau's conduct since, producing not a single processed page despite a court order, despite your own promised timetables of January, March and June of this year, despite the open irritation of a federal judge who noted this case has been pending for over three years, tells its own story.
Why is this man so important to your agency, Director?
What service has Bola Tinubu rendered the United States that earns him protection your own citizens cannot obtain about their own government? Was he a source? An asset? A cooperator? If so, say it. If not, release the file. The Freedom of Information Act does not contain an exemption for the embarrassment of foreign presidents.
Let me tell you what your lawyers in Washington may not have explained to you. Nigerians are not fools. We are among the most educated diasporas in the United States, your own census data confirms it. We read court filings. We know what a Glomar response is. We know what ex parte means. We watched Judge Howell rule in April 2025 that your refusal to confirm the existence of records was, in her words, neither logical nor plausible, because your agencies had already acknowledged that Tinubu was a subject of investigation. Playing games with our intelligence will not work.
And understand this clearly. You may have leverage over one man. You do not have leverage over 230 million Nigerians. Nigeria is Africa's largest democracy, a trading partner worth billions of dollars annually to American business, the anchor of West Africa. Bola Tinubu will leave office, whether in 2027 or before. The government that follows him, and the generation that elects it, will remember precisely who shielded him, and why. A partnership built on the concealment of one man's past is not a partnership with Nigeria. It is a partnership against her.
There are also questions this file may finally settle that go to the heart of our 2027 presidential election. Questions about identity, about credentials, about a biography that has never withstood scrutiny, questions currently before Nigeria's own Federal High Court in the Atiku Abubakar suit over his eligibility. Nigerian voters have a right to the truth before they vote, not after.
Director Patel, you built your public reputation denouncing the deep state, secret files, and two-tiered justice. You wrote a book about government gangsters. Here is your test. The box is already open. The dots are already connected. Every day of delay, every sealed declaration, every extension request is itself an answer, because no agency fights this hard, this long, to conceal a clean record.
Release the Tinubu files. All of them. Let Nigerians judge for themselves.
History is watching you, and so are we.
Yours faithfully,
Kio Amachree
Founder and President, Worldview International
Stockholm
Nigeria: Islamic terrorists held a mass assembly of Christian hostages.
The Muslims forced these believers, from multiple tribes, to beg in their native languages to be ransomed.
This evil is intolerable and must be ripped out of Nigeria, root and branch.
Nigeria: Meet Rev. Tanko Bulus Barnabas, a Christian and former member of the Nigerian Air Force
Today he is a sickly man, wasting away in jail under false charges
His real crime was encouraging fellow
Nigerians - who are regularly assaulted by terrorists - to exercise self-defense.
Some influential people do not want Nigerians to defend themselves, and they are making an example of Tanko.
Pray for Tanko and an end to this injustice.
#FreeTanko
We absolutely CANNOT remove the CPC designation from Nigeria while radical Islamic terrorists continue this horrific violence against Christians.
@AsstSecStateAF is right. The Nigerian government must meet its commitments to protect innocent Christian communities.