By KEMI KASUMU
Nigeria’s President-elect, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will be moving into the Defence Guest House in Maitama District of Abuja, according to a media report.
Tinubu will function at the Defence Guest House until he is sworn-in as President on May 29, 2023.
“The President-elect will be moving into Defence House, in Maitama, FCT, where he will spend the next couple of months, and from where he will move into the Presidential Villa,” a tweet by the All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council stated on Thursday.
The notice came barely 24 hours after the Independent National Electoral Commission declared Tinubu as the winner of the February 25 presidential elections.
From the Defence House, Tinubu will receive briefings and hold key meetings as President-elect, according to the Spokesperson of All Progressives Congress (APC)’s Presidential Campaign Council (PCC), Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN), who reportedly said he could not confirm the actual time the President-elect will move into the new location.
It is, however, not the new time the development is happening. After his declaration as winner of February 2015 presidential election, Muhammadu Buhari, as President-elect, went through the same process.
The DEFENDER recalls that then President-elect Buhari was also moved into the Defence House in Abuja, where he lodged, received briefings and held important meetings preparatory to his inauguration on May 29, 2015.
Buhari had remained at the guest house even beyond May 29 when, as newly inaugurated President, he made his first appointments namely, Special Adviser (Media and Publicity), Mr. Femi Adesina, and Senior Special Assistant (Media and Publicity), Mallam Garba Shehu, on Sunday May 31, 2023.
Still at the Defence House also, the then new President also appointed his State Chief of Protocol (SCOP), Alhaji Lawal Abdullahi Kazaure.
In the same vein, the current President-elect Alhaji Bola Tinubu will undergo the same Defence House experience.
He was, on Wednesday, declared winner of the February 25, 2023 presidential election after polling 8,794,726, in a poll his Peoples Democratic Party counterpart, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, scored 6,984,520 votes, and Labour Party’s Peter Obi who polled 6,101,533.
Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian Peoples Party garnered 1,496,687 votes to emerge fourth.
