Given the way you have turned out to be a fearless politician,i hope it is not unreasonable to assume that you were not a compliant child while growing up.

What were those pranks you played and how were you dealt with when caught?　
I admit that I played some pranks and got spanked while growing up. Yes, I indulged in some pranks, like trespassing into other people’s gardens to pluck oranges, despite warnings not to do so. I would spend my allowance on bicycle renting. I told a couple of lies. For example, I would collect money from big uncles for the purchase of five books – Dic, Tion, Na, Ry –) instead of one dictionary! It was only one that I needed. I did that so as to have enough money to play around, rent bicycles and buy sneakers. I would play football, go and play at the lagoon, and turning out very dirty and rough in the evenings. There were so many of such pranks.
I would seize football from my mates and take it home. The boys would come to the house, asking for the football and my parents would spank me and order that I return the ball to its owners. There was a time I asked my uncle, the late Kafaru Tinubu’s dispatch rider to lend me his motorbike to ride. One day, he gave the motorbike to me to ride. As I got back home, my uncle, who had travelled and was not expected back at the time, had arrived. He caught us and ordered that we be locked up. It took a while before he released us, and I was severely flogged.
　
There were instances in which I and few of my friends would sneak into the truck of musicians, like the late Adeolu Akinsanya and Roy Chicago, without knowing where they were travelling to for musical performances. We would hide ourselves in their instrument trucks. There was a particular day when we did that and found ourselves in Ado-Ekiti, somewhere I had never been before. We did not know that he was going to perform at Christ’s School, Ado Ekiti. We had no money to return to Lagos and were stranded there. We couldn’t follow them back to Lagos because they were headed for another location, where they had a show. We managed to get to Lagos by jumping on a cocoa truck that was coming to Lagos.Why did you opt to study Accounting?
Sincerely, it was accidental. It was the university placement. I was good in Mathematics and business courses. In fact, if I were to choose a career for myself, I would have chosen marketing. I know Tunde was placed in the Mathematics department also by the university. I came in with A grades and I had nothing less than A+ in Accounting and Statistics.

How did you get into Mobil?

At Deloitte and Touche, I chose to travel more than 80 per cent of my working years there. And that is because if a staff chose to travel, he would make more money because he would get travel allowances. That got me into National Oil, which became the Joint Venture Partner of Aramco Oil in Saudi Arabia, which is like the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. We had gone there to set up their accounting and auditing system. It was while on that service that I got my financial break. When I returned to the United States, my employers gave me a huge bonus, which instantly turned me into a millionaire.

How much was that?

The bonus was $850,000, before taxes. My salaries were also being paid into the bank and I was not touching them. At the time, my salary deposits in the bank had risen to about $1.8 million.ince you were having a good time in Mobil, why did you leave all that to join politics?
It was when I was arranging these finances. There were a lot of things that I don’t need to talk about now that got me in contact with Ahmadu Abubakar and Ibrahim Babangida. Such things got my name around socially. Then, my cousin, Alhaji Kola Oseni, and Dapo Sarumi, who was US-trained, told me their group wanted to contest for governorship. They had started their politics, but I didn’t participate. I was only raising funds for them. They said they wanted quality service delivery for Lagos State. I saw the Lagos State governorship as a department that needed a good manager. We were looking at civilization, quality control. If you went to some housing estates then, they were like this, like that. There must be good quality, standard. And the person who must fix these things must be civilized.
We decided to support Dapo Sarumi.
Gradually, I moved from raising funds to getting involved. I brought some money to Nigeria out of my dividends. I was comfortable because my investments in America and London were already yielding dividends. Then came the crisis leading to the ban of Professor Femi Agbalajobi and Chief Dapo Sarumi. I threw my weight behind Yomi Edu. He lost the election and our group was devastated. I went to Ahmadu Abubakar and IBB. I wrote a report and I was strongly against the Structural Adjustment Programme introduced by the military government. The idea of the new generation banks came from those reports. Abubakar, from being a permanent secretary, became Minister of Finance.
IBB saw the significance of the advice as well as the short, medium and long term vision that was in the report. That man was a good listener. You could think with him. He is still alive. This probe of NNPC dates back to those periods. You can give the NNPC a bank draft for 120 days and you will still be using that money!
They started touting the idea that intelligent, brilliant and dynamic people like me should be in the Senate and must change Nigeria. The idea gradually started coming into my head. People like Kola Oseni, Alhaji Hamzat, Busurat Alebiosu, Demola Adeniji-Adele, Prince Olusi, who were members of the Primrose Group at that time, started persuading me to go to the Senate. The Primrose Group was piling so much pressure on Alhaji Kola Oseni to persuade me.
The MD of Mobil, Bob Parker, thought I was crazy when I told him I wanted to join politics. I also told the Finance Director, Akinyelure, that I wanted to join politics and use my brain for my country and that I couldn’t continue to be an armchair critic. The two of them could not believe what I said. They said, given my career path in Mobil, if there was any chance of anybody becoming something there, then I would be the one. I stood my ground and said I would give it a try.
I told them that people do it in America and Bob Parker agreed. They said they would give me a leave of absence for four years, during which they would not fill my position. They later said that they would not stop me because it would rub off positively on them if I became successful in politics. They told me to come back and take my position if I found it uninteresting and unchallenging.
So I contested the Lagos West Senatorial district election.After your governorship, your life rhythm has not changed – travels, meetings etc. How do you cope?
I have given you my background, a corporate background; working in a different cultural environment as a black man in a reputable company like Deloitte and Touche. You have to work harder to impress the average white man that you are as good, if not better, than he is. If you cannot go that extra mile and discipline yourself, you are not going to achieve.

Don’t you think this is the time for you to retire?

The challenges of governance are monumental. The model we set up in Lagos is working well and I will recommend it for Nigeria. Let the governor take care of the administration and its nitty-gritty, if he is scholarly enough and sharp, while other political leaders take the political pressures off him. I don’t have files to sign. Let them go and sign the files and deal with the routine of governance so that he can focus on the developmental goals of the state. It is all about service and as long as I still have energy and ability to think, I believe I should continue.
You waged several battles against Obasanjo on issues like fiscal federalism, seizure of local council funds etc. Which of these wars did you consider the hottest?
If I have to rank them, I think the creation of the local governments was my favourite because the processes are clearly stated and well articulated in the constitution. And if you do all of that and comply with the constitutional requirements, then you should not be denied. I believe in true federalism. I believe in local government administration, which I think is a service centre for the state. The constitution is clear. It is wrong to even think that there are three tiers of government in a federal system of government. There are only two – the state and the federal. It is because the constitution was put together by a group of military people, who believe in command and control that we have this kind of anomaly.
They tinkered with it and they tailored it in a way that would suit a unitary system and I believe that was the problem. We still don’t have a constitution of ‘we the people’. The battle was not personally directed at Obasanjo. I know he is a dictator and I knew he would be imperialistic, which he was.
My commitment to the fundamentals of a democratic system and federal principles has not changed. I believe that we still must discuss; you might call it a constitutional conference, whether it is sovereign or not. Sovereignty belongs to the people, but we still need a constitutional conference that would respond to the need of our people, and that would devolve power to the state and all local governments.
It is cheating and illegal to list 774 local governments in a constitution that allows for the creation of additional councils. It doesn’t even give the consequential order or right to the National Assembly.
The constitution doesn’t allow them the rejection. Go to the constitution. So, the constitution lists the 774 as a directory of existing local councils when the constitution was promulgated and enforced. It doesn’t forbid you from creating new ones. That is why we have the perverted revenue allocation formula, which is equally unconstitutional. When you determine the farcical allocation of the federal revenue, with 52 per cent to the federal government and 28 per cent to the states and the remaining to the local government, you are using vertical indices. The population of that state has not changed, the geographical boundaries in the state have not changed or been altered and the number of schools have not changed either. So, if you are given 28 per cent, divided by 36 states, it is funny. Local government finances and revenues will be administered by the state and House of Assembly. What are we talking about? We are just a lawless nation. We are not sincerely committed to constitutional democracy and that is why we can have any hogwash.
That is why you take the total money for local government.

People say Asiwaju is the richest Yoruba man. How rich are you?

If you are talking in monetary terms, it is a lie. But I want them to continue to believe that I am rich. The fact is that I cannot prepare for my death. I want to live long and I believe in people and I believe in sharing. So, whatever you ascribe to me in terms of wealth is your own imagination. I will not do two cheques – one to the Central Bank of Heaven and the other one to the Central Bank of Hell – cashable when I am dead. The money will remain here. I don’t want to be greedy, but frugal with the little I have and be contented. There are certain things they can’t dispute and one of these is that I wasn’t a poor man when I joined politics. I financed the struggle during the NADECO days. Before the NADECO days, I financed political goals and aspirations. I financed political groups and individuals.
No matter how you dream, it is empty without financial success. If you have no concrete financial progress for a state or an entity, it will not endure. I have not taken Lagos to bankruptcy. It was bankrupt before I took over, I turned it into a success within my two-terms as governor. It had existed for so long before I became governor.
During my tenure, former President Olusegun Obasanjo described Lagos as an urban jungle and uninhabitable. But he chose to celebrate his 75th birthday in Lagos recently! There was a dispute on the control of the Bar Beach during my tenure, but if I didn’t rigidly follow my vision and my belief in Lagos State, Victoria Island would have been submerged. Go there today, it is gradually emerging the biggest real estate that you could ever imagine. You don’t have to go to Dubai again. So, whatever they say, I say let them say. I am proud of my achievements in all facets of life. I won’t use two breast pockets or trucks to load money to heaven when it is time. I just pray that I live longer and continue to struggle for quality and better life for my people.
We don’t have reasons to be poor in this country, because we are blessed. Take a helicopter and fly to Kwara, Kogi, Abuja, Kaduna, etc, you will see vast green land. We have land for food.
Education is the greatest weapon against poverty and we have seen this to be true. We cannot innovate without education; we cannot be great without education; yet we have not committed ourselves to it. We need a leader that is a thinker and a doer to drive that vision for this country.
The last hope of human defense in any democracy is the judiciary. That arm is now being decimated. There are so many challenges and so much injustice out there. But when you amputate justice, you are opening up the nation for instability. When you have to bypass the constitution to ensure that one political party is in power, you are looking for chaos and instability. When you take away the right of the citizens to fair hearing in any democracy, you have committed a crime and you have set the nation on the path of instability and destruction. Once we lose faith in the judicial system, we are saying we should not settle our disputes. If that be, disputes will now be settled on the streets with dane guns, cutlasses and so on. So you are creating an environment for a banana republic. We have those challenges in the judiciary. If we neglect the society and allow it to slip into chaos, many of us who invest in our children and their education and development at the expense of the poor people are putting that investment at risk. Because the children of the poor will revolt one day. When they start, we can’t predict the outcome. We should do it right or else we will have ourselves to blame.
You asked a question whether I am not tired or thinking of retirement now. Even to be idle will be too dangerous.

http://www.pmnewsnigeria.com/2012/04/03/tinubu-my-life-my-story/

he admit that he played some pranks and got spanked while growing up.

the same dangerous prank his parter/politic friend(buhari) is playing on nigerians.

Tinubu is a colossus!

Hate or love him, you cant change who jagaban is...

pls I would love it more if you put your acts in book for posterity. Our leaders not writing in one of the problem also, I don't care about the content, I know it will entails truths and falsehood, but we can analyse and sieve the wheat from the shafts.