A United States-based lobbying firm retained by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has claimed that efforts by President Bola Tinubu to secure a meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) have failed and that the proposed encounter is now dead.
Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C., the Washington firm working for Atiku under a reported $1.2 million lobbying contract, stated in a post on X that Tinubu’s push for Trump’s support and a private meeting at the UNGA would not materialise.
The firm asserted it had undermined what it described as a multimillion-dollar Nigerian lobbying campaign aimed at winning over the US president.
“The effort to secure President Trump’s support for Tinubu has failed. The pushed White House meeting is not going to happen. The effort to secure U.S. support for Tinubu’s presidential campaign has failed,” the firm declared.
It added a sarcastic note directed at the Nigerian side: “We understand their frustration, and we would like to play the world’s smallest violin for their sorrows.”
The firm linked its actions to longstanding US civil forfeiture records from the early 1990s involving funds allegedly connected to Tinubu.
It said it had shared related Department of Justice documents with members of the Trump administration and Congress.
Earlier statements from the same firm had predicted that key Trump administration officials would refuse a private meeting with Tinubu over the historical allegations.
Neither the White House nor the Nigerian government has independently confirmed that a formal Tinubu-Trump meeting was ever scheduled for the UNGA.
Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Jimoh Ibrahim, had earlier indicated that Tinubu would attend and sit close to Trump in the General Assembly Hall, raising the possibility of an encounter.
However, the Presidency later confirmed that Tinubu would not attend the 81st UNGA in person, directing Vice President Kashim Shettima to lead the Nigerian delegation instead. This marks Tinubu’s third consecutive absence from the annual gathering.
Presidential spokesman Sunday Dare has previously dismissed the firm’s comments as reflecting “an individual associated with Atiku-linked political interests” rather than the position of the US government or Trump, describing the campaign as a politically motivated attempt to revive old records ahead of the 2027 elections.
The claims form part of a broader contest playing out in Washington as Nigeria’s political rivals seek to shape perceptions in the United States ahead of the next presidential contest.
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