President Bola Tinubu has joined the United States Department of Justice in seeking a 10-day extension to respond to a motion requesting the release of records relating to allegations of drug trafficking.
Tinubu’s legal team filed a notice of joinder before the US District Court for the District of Columbia, asking to be placed on the same schedule as the defendants in the case.
The lawyers said they were joining the defendants’ request for additional time to respond to a motion for summary judgment.
However, US District Judge Beryl Howell subsequently denied the request for an extension.
The case, Aaron Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, et al., has been pending for more than three years.
The records being sought relate to US investigations and allegations concerning Tinubu and suspected drug-trafficking activities.
Previous reports have linked a $460,000 asset forfeiture involving Tinubu to a US federal investigation into a Chicago-based heroin-trafficking network in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1993, a US District Court ordered the forfeiture of $460,000 held in an account in Tinubu’s name to the US government.
The order stated that the funds represented proceeds of narcotics trafficking or were involved in transactions violating money-laundering laws.
Tinubu has consistently denied any wrongdoing or involvement in drug trafficking.
His lawyers have maintained that the forfeiture proceeding was a civil action against the money and not a criminal case against Tinubu. They have also argued that he was never arrested, indicted, arraigned or convicted of a drug-related offence in the United States.
