The CIA confirmed on Monday that Nigerian President Bola Tinubu is an active asset.
This was revealed in a U.S. District Court filing where the CIA, FBI, and DEA opposed a civil lawsuit seeking FOIA disclosure on Tinubu’s drug trafficking investigation records.
A renowned Nigerian investigative journalist David Hundeyin reported that the CIA, FBI, and DEA filed a memorandum opposing motion for summary judgment in the FOIA disclosure case about Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s drug trafficking investigation records, seeking to have the redactions removed from the (partially released) files.
In the filing, the CIA effectively confirmed that Nigeria’s Tinubu is an active CIA asset.
An excerpt from the CIA filing reads: “Human sources can be expected to furnish information to the CIA only when they are confident the CIA can and will do everything in its power to prevent the public disclosure of their cooperation. In the case of a person who has been cooperating with the CIA, official confirmation of that cooperation could cause the targets to take retaliatory action against that person or against their family or friends.
“It also places in jeopardy every individual with whom the cooperating individual has had contact.
“Thus, the indiscretion of one source in a chain of intelligence sources can damage an entire spectrum of sources. As such, confirming or denying the existence of records on a particular foreign national, like Tinubu, reasonably could be expected to cause damage to U.S. national security by indicating whether or not the CIA maintained any human intelligence sources related to Tinubu, and identifying any access or lack of access any such sources had to intelligence concerning him.”
The filing in a paragraph added: “We oppose full, unredacted disclosure of the DEA’s Bola Tinubu heroin trafficking investigation records because we believe that while Nigerians have a right to be informed about what their government is up to, they do not have a right to know what their president is up to.”