On August 28, President Bola Tinubu filed a 16-page motion in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia begging the court not to release his unredacted FBI and DEA files. His argument? That there is “no public interest” in the records, and that the plaintiff, transparency activist Aaron Greenspan, has “ulterior motives” because he wants documents with Tinubu’s name on them.

Let that sink in. The sitting President of over 200 million Nigerians says the public has no interest in knowing whether their Head of State was investigated in connection with a Chicago heroin ring. The files in question include FBI Form 302 interview records from 1992 and 1993 and the record of a 1993 civil forfeiture in which Tinubu surrendered 460,000 dollars to the American government. You do not hand nearly half a million dollars to the US Treasury out of generosity.

And the court has already spoken. Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the FBI and DEA officially confirmed investigations of Tinubu relating to the drug trafficking ring, and that his privacy interests are outweighed by the public interest in disclosure. A federal judge says the world has a right to know. Tinubu says the world has no interest. Who do you believe?

Where is the DSS? Where are the Nigerian police? A file should have been opened long ago. Instead, the same institutions that hound activists and journalists guard the man the entire world is reading about on social media, no matter how quiet the terrestrial media stays. Every political figure lining up to defend this is choosing complicity over country.

This is not just embarrassing. It is nation-crushing. It tells our youth that criminality, if it climbs high enough, becomes untouchable. It is not acceptable. It is a disgrace. And if Nigerians sit back and do nothing, that is the end of Nigeria.

The truth is coming out of that courtroom whether Aso Rock likes it or not. History will not redact itself.

Letters from Stockholm, by Kio Amachree