President Bola Tinubu’s legal team has acknowledged factual and drafting errors in an earlier court filing in the United States concerning records of a decades-old narcotics investigation, asking a federal judge for permission to correct the disputed passages while maintaining its original legal arguments.
The development emerged from a motion filed on October 1, 2026, before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit instituted by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan.
The case, Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys et al., Civil Action No. 23-1816 (BAH), centres on Greenspan’s efforts to compel U.S. government agencies to release records relating to Tinubu and an investigation dating back to the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In the motion titled “Motion to Amend Response Brief [DE 98],” Tinubu’s lawyers asked the court to authorise the replacement of their earlier response to Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment, citing errors in Part 1.c of the original filing.
The legal team admitted that the disputed section contained incorrect references to the year 1993, Tinubu’s public office and a comparison involving student enrolment.
According to the lawyers, their central argument was that the investigative events between 1988 and 1992 occurred decades before Tinubu was elected President of Nigeria.
However, they conceded that the argument had been presented “inadequately and incorrectly” in relation to the references to public office and 1993.
The lawyers also acknowledged a separate mistake in a comparison between the age of the investigative records and a student-enrolment event, explaining that the enrolment event had actually occurred before the historical 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 motion stated.
They further disclosed that Greenspan had identified both errors in his subsequent reply to the earlier court submission.
Despite admitting the mistakes, Tinubu’s legal representatives insisted that the corrections would not alter the substance of their defence.
“In the proposed amended response, the substance of the argument in part 1.c remains unchanged,” they stated.
Their position is that Tinubu’s privacy interests in records concerning events from decades ago should remain protected, notwithstanding his subsequent emergence as Nigeria’s president.
The legal team also informed the court that it had consulted Greenspan and his lawyers about the proposed corrections before submitting the motion.
According to the filing, Greenspan did not oppose the correction of the brief, paving the way for the request to be considered without opposition from the plaintiff.
Tinubu’s lawyers consequently urged the court to permit the amended response to replace the earlier filing, identified as Document 98. They also submitted a proposed order for the judge’s consideration.
However, the attached order was clearly marked as a proposed document and contained a blank space for the judge’s signature. The filing therefore does not establish that the court had approved the request as of the date of submission.
The amended response also reiterates Tinubu’s opposition to Greenspan’s demand for additional records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Among other arguments, the President’s lawyers contend that the disputed information is protected under the law-enforcement privacy exemption of the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act.
They maintain that the records concern events that took place long before Tinubu assumed the presidency and argue that his current position does not automatically extinguish his privacy rights.