2023: Source of Tinubu’s wealth revealed, as Dele Alake challenges those disputing his wealth, identity to come with proofs
*Adeola Soetan reportedly questions ex-Tinubu’s commissioner on wealth background claims
*As Refresh Nigeria replies Alake, ‘We have proofs but will choose the ballot as best option’
By OUR REPORTER
The Director of Strategic Communication in the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council (APCPCO), Mr. Dele Alake, has claimed that the party’s flagbearer, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, made his money from buying stocks in blue chip companies.
Alake said this while speaking on a topic, “THE TINUBU INTEGRITY TEST AND DOCUMENTARY CONTROVERSY”, during a Channels Television’s Sunday Politics interview on September 11, 2022.
Ahead of the 2023 elections, the source of Tinubu’s wealth has again come under scrutiny. But Alake insisted the former Lagos governor was not a “pauper” before he became a senator in 1992.
“I knew him to have been spending money ever before he got to office. In 1991, he was going into politics, he contested a senatorial election — Lagos West — and he won,” he said about the former Lagos leader, whose name ‘Tinubu’ lines him up only with Lagos Island that is Lagos Central family.
Alake continued that, “Most Nigerians know that contesting elections in Nigeria is not a child’s play. Paupers don’t contest elections. How much more a senatorial election? He must be a man of some means. In fact, before then, he had been contributing to political organisations and causes before he took up the gauntlet and went into the senate.
“He polled the highest number of votes nationwide in that senatorial election of that year and became a senator in 1992.
“Fast forward to 1993, we started the June 12, he was in the Yar’Adua’s caucus — the Peoples Font — within SDP at that time. He was also funding. He was not a pauper.”
Alake said those questioning Tinubu’s source of wealth are expressing the “hatred” they have for the former Lagos governor.
“What I know is that right from his days in the corporate world, he has been trading in stocks even in foreign currencies,” he added.
“He has been buying stocks, bonds and all of that. I’m not a finance person. I’m not going to be interested in the nitty-gritty of it all.
“But I know he has been trading in stocks. He was buying stocks of blue chip companies and all of that. He was making money and spending money. He has been doing all of these years before he got to office.
“Why people are querying his source of wealth is because he had been a successful governor of Lagos and a successful politician even after office.
“He is about the only one of the class of 1999 who is at that enviable height, politically. He is bound to attract all of these negative comments.”
Identity
On his his change of identity, the former Lagos Commissioner said those claiming that Bola Tinubu changed his identity have no proof and that, if they have thing they are saying the truth, they should prove it.
“Now, let me tell you point blank that his name, as far as I know, is Bola Ahmed Tinubu. If anybody else has another name that I am not aware of and has proof of that name, let the person come forward.”
He said, “Since 1999, so many things have been raised concerning his origin, concerning his name and all of that. Some names have been put in the public domain, but nobody has come to prove or show any evidence of those names being his biological names or of some people being his parents outside of those he says are his parents.
“Now, if you must allege, you must prove. You can’t just allege and then go away and assume that everybody else will be as uncritical in thinking and assume it and take it hook, line and sinker.”
Critics of the former Lagos governor had claimed that Tinubu is not from the state and have constantly questioned his origin.
But speaking on the show, the APC chieftain asked: “If Bola Tinubu is not his name, what is his name? How do you now show us evidence, documentary evidence, that this is the name Bola Tinubu was given at birth and not Bola Tinubu?
“As long as you can’t come up with that, as long as nobody — at least since 1999, 23 years, nobody has come up with any contrary evidence that his name is not Bola Tinubu. What do you expect me to say to that but to dismiss it as the rantings of nabobs of negativism? Nothing else.
“Some say he is not a Lagosian; he is from Iragbiji in Osun, he is from Osogbo, he is from that… What is my business with all of that? How does that affect the quality of the man’s brain?”
He went on to mention former United States President Bill Clinton in his argument.
“Clinton was not his father. Clinton was his stepfather,” he said, adding that he wanted to use the opportunity to enlighten “those who think all of these things are material”.
“It is the stuff that the man is made of (that matters). The hood does not make the monk. It is the stuff that is upstairs of the monk”.
Questions about his certificates have come to the fore after it emerged that the credentials Tinubu submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) did not include his primary and secondary school certificates.
Tinubu has said his certificates were carted away when the military raided his house during the fight against the annulment of the June 12, 1993 elections.
The absence of the certificates has also been cited in reports as proof of claims that he went by another name in his younger days.
But Mr Alake challenged those with any certificate or documentary evidence that the claims are true.
He said more including the aspect of the responses where he claimed that it was not his business to know who the owner of ALPHA BETA, a company said to have been taking 10 percent of the total wealth of Lagos State, is whereas he was Commissioner for Information and Strategy under the Tinubu administration for eight years (1999-2007).
Adeola Soetan reacts
Refresh Nigeria speaks
Claimers’ burder of proofs
At any rate, Dele Alake’s challenge demanding for proofs remains valid, until those who, since many years, have laid claims regarding identity change and issues of source of wealth against Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu are able to come forward with their proofs.
