NOBODY OWNS THE TINUBU FILES — AND NOBODY SHOULD CLAIM THE CREDIT
Letters from Stockholm — Kio Amachree
Without Aaron Greenspan, David Hundeyin, Mike Arnold, myself and a handful of others who refused to let this matter disappear, the American records concerning Bola Tinubu might still be something Nigerians whispered about, rather than something being contested in a United States federal court.
So let us get the history straight.
The record
Aaron Greenspan did not appear after Atiku Abubakar hired a Washington lobbyist. He filed twelve Freedom of Information Act requests with six American government agencies in 2022 and 2023, and on 12 June 2023 he sued the United States government in federal court. In April 2025, Judge Beryl Howell rejected the FBI’s and DEA’s attempt to simply neither confirm nor deny the existence of responsive records.
David Hundeyin worked alongside Greenspan to bring public attention to the records and the litigation. Mike Arnold has campaigned openly for their release.
I played my own part. I wrote directly to President Donald Trump and to senior American officials, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of State Marco Rubio and FBI Director Kash Patel, and I raised the matter with the United Nations. I argued, repeatedly, that the United States should stop shielding Tinubu and that Nigerians had a right to know what these records contain. This is my own account of my own correspondence; I make no claim beyond it.
I was not paid by Atiku Abubakar or by anyone else.
The lobbyist
That is why I have grown uncomfortable watching Atiku’s Washington lobbyist, Karl Von Batten, give the impression that this campaign belongs to him, or to his client.
It does not.
The US Department of Justice’s own FARA database settles his position. His firm, Von Batten-Montague-York, is a registered foreign agent for Atiku Abubakar. The engagement was filed in April 2026 — almost three years after Greenspan went to federal court. The publicly filed agreement runs for twelve months at $1.2 million, and its stated purposes include strengthening Atiku’s reputation in Washington and countering the incumbent government’s lobbying narrative.
The chronology matters. Von Batten did not originate the Greenspan litigation. Atiku did not originate it. Neither should be permitted to rewrite the history of people who were fighting this battle before their lobbying contract existed.
I also have questions about the man himself. Justice Department records identify him as Dr Karl-Marx Edward Okeke-Von Batten III; other public records and reporting give different versions of his name. That establishes no wrongdoing — people are entitled to change their names — but Nigerians are entitled to ask who is being paid substantial sums to represent a man seeking the presidency.
More troubling is the increasingly personal public confrontation now unfolding. Von Batten’s firm has announced plans for a $36 million lawsuit against Femi Fani-Kayode and Tinubu over alleged threats. Fani-Kayode denies the allegations and has signalled a $100 million action of his own. These are allegations and counter-allegations, not findings of fact.
But I ask a political question: how does any of this help Nigeria? A registered foreign agent, retained to advance a presidential candidate’s standing in Washington, has instead become the story. Sometimes the most professional response to provocation is to decline to participate in it.
The company he keeps
The people around a presidential candidate tell us what kind of administration he may assemble.
Consider Dino Melaye, Atiku’s long-standing spokesman and political ally, who has made a public spectacle of his fleet of luxury cars — filming them, parading them, and inviting the country to admire them — while millions of Nigerians struggle with the price of food, transport and petrol. He may own whatever he can lawfully afford. But a man who speaks for a presidential candidate, and who chooses to flaunt that kind of wealth before a population in economic pain, tells us something about the political culture that candidate is prepared to tolerate. Politically, it is extraordinarily insensitive; as a signal of what an Atiku government would look like, it is worse.
The candidate
Which brings me to Atiku himself.
I consider Atiku more impressive than Tinubu in several respects. That does not exempt him from hard questions. Nigeria cannot replace one political establishment with another and call it transformation.
Atiku is an elderly politician whose public career stretches back decades, from the Nigeria Customs Service into business and politics. That history is neither a qualification nor a disqualification. What matters is the government he proposes to build now.
Who are the people around him? What are their standards? What, precisely, would he change? How would his administration differ structurally from the political culture Nigerians are trying to escape? And of all the lawyers, strategists and lobbying firms available in Washington, why did his operation choose this particular team?
These are legitimate questions, and Nigerians should keep asking them.
Nigeria desperately needs to break from old-style politics: the personality cults, the sycophancy, the entourages fighting personal battles while ordinary Nigerians struggle to survive.
For the record
Aaron Greenspan took the Tinubu records to federal court long before Atiku hired Karl Von Batten. Journalists, activists and campaigners then carried the issue forward, at a time when doing so brought insults, threats and abuse rather than political contracts.
Nobody should now arrive at the end of the battle, plant a flag on the field and claim to have fought the war alone.
We remember who was there.
History has a long memory.
#Nigeria #TinubuFiles #AaronGreenspan #AtikuAbubakar #DinoMelaye #Accountability #FOIA #Nigeria2027 #LettersFromStockholm
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