₦airaland Forum

The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress Bola Tinubu, on Sunday afternoon in Kano, declared that he would devote 100 per cent of his time and energy to serving Nigerians if elected.

This was as the former Lagos State governor mocked the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, pledging that he would not be a part-time president that would spend 50 per cent of his time ruling the country from Dubai.

This was contained in a statement released in Abuja by Tinubu’s Media Officer, Tunde Rahman, shortly after his interactive session with members of the popular Tijjaniyyah sect in Kano.

The statement partly read, “I won’t be a part-time President who will share time between living in Dubai and Nigeria. I would concentrate attention and energy on confronting and surmounting Nigeria’s pressing challenges.”


Tinubu’s mockery was coming barely two months after his running mate, Senator Kashim Shettima, described the former vice president as a political tourist who only returned to the country every electoral cycle.

While referring to Atiku as a father he held in high esteem, Shettima said Nigerians wanted a leader whose worth and output could be felt at home.


Endorsing Tinubu’s ambition on Sunday, the Tijjaniyyah sect demanded that his presidency should ensure inclusion of their members in cabinet and other government appointments, reduction in Hajj fares and assistance in concluding Tijjaniyyah University under construction in Kano.

Reacting, Tinubu said the answers to their demand were in his manifesto, which was unveiled on Friday by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).

While assuring the northern business leaders of better business environment with well-thought-out policies, Tinubu identified the link between Kano as a centre of commerce and his economic plan for Nigeria.

He said, “There is a strong nexus between the place of Kano as a centre of prosperity and my plan for Nigeria. What I pledge is a revamped economy which will renew the hope of our people. Our country needs multiple centres of prosperity, and we intend to achieve that by adding value across all sectors of our economy.

“As I said during my speech at the Arewa House on Monday, Nigeria is sitting on a goldmine. There is no state in Nigeria that is lacking in one resources or another. We are determined to explore and exploit these resources to the maximum benefits of our people. Kano, for example, has huge agricultural potentials and important mineral resources underneath its ground like gold, silver, nickel, tin ore and columbite. Each of these, if properly harnessed, can add significantly to our economy as a country.”

Bobloco:
The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Tinubu, on Sunday afternoon in Kano, declared that he would devote 100 per cent of his time and energy to serving Nigerians if elected.

Reflect7:
I hate when you people mock candidates based on their health, or possible health condition.

Show some humanity and stop being so spiteful and godless.

Bobloco:
https://punchng.com/i-wont-govern-from-dubai-tinubu-mocks-atiku/

Reflect7:
I hate when you people mock candidates based on their health, or possible health condition.

Show some humanity and stop being so spiteful and godless.

Reflect7:
I hate when you people mock candidates based on their health, or possible health condition.

Show some humanity and stop being so spiteful and godless.

Bobloco:
https://punchng.com/i-wont-govern-from-dubai-tinubu-mocks-atiku/

HitRun:
:DThe only problem is that his energy is at 10%; meaning even if he devotes 100% of his time, no progress can be made.

Francis5:
Nigeria’s Next Leader’s Ties to a Heroin Ring

Former Lagos provincial governor Bola Tinubu, affectionately nicknamed the Jagaban, is today seen as a shrewd if not “deeply Machiavellian” Svengali in Nigeria’s politics as well as the architect of a hugely successful anti-corruption platform. But 20 years ago he had to forfeit nearly half a million dollars to the U.S. Treasury Department after being named as an accomplice in a white heroin-trafficking and money-laundering ring that stretched from West Africa to the U.S. Midwest.

Although his case has been bandied about the Nigerian press for years, Tinubu’s involvement in a federal drug and racketeering investigation waged jointly by the DEA, FBI, and IRS has gone unreported elsewhere, even after his ascendance to Karl Rove-like status last month. A recent gauzy Financial Times profile of him, for instance, neglected to mention that two decades ago Tinubu was identified as a bagman for two Nigerian heroin movers who operated out of Chicago and Hammond, Indiana. They were Adegboyega Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele, Akande’s nephew, who was exposed to law enforcement after selling white heroin first to Lee Andrew Edwards, another dealer later jailed for trying to murder a federal agent, and then to an undercover cop.

In a 1993 court docket from the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, which The Daily Beast obtained from Sahara Reporters, a Nigeria-focused news outlet, IRS Special Agent Kevin Moss said that Akande had run the white heroin ring in the late 1980s until 1990, when he handed off the U.S arm of the business to his nephew, who had arrived in 1988. Akande then returned to Nigeria but continued to oversee the operation from abroad with the help of others at home and in the United States, including his relatives. One of the individuals identified in his cartel by Moss was Tinubu, then a Chicago State University-educated accountant working as a treasurer for Mobil Oil Nigeria Ltd, a subsidiary of energy giant Mobil Oil, which was still a few years shy of its famous merger with Exxon in 1999.

In the biography section of his official website, Tinubu is described as having emigrated to the United States in 1975 “in search of the proverbial Golden Fleece with a heart brimming with unrelenting determination to achieve his visions.” This is certainly one way to describe his tenure stateside.

In 1989, Moss said in an affidavit, Tinubu established an individual money market account, into which he deposited $1,000 in traveler’s checks, and a negotiable order of withdrawal account (NOW) at First Heritage Bank in Country Club Hills, Illinois. The address Tinubu gave the bank was the same as the listed headquarters of Globe-Link International, the front company owned by Akande and his relatives.

“There’s a trend of various Nigerian politicians at the highest levels involved in dodgy business deals around the world, in property and cash.”

Bank employees told Moss that Akande had personally introduced them to Tinubu in December 1989 when who also opened a joint checking account with his wife, Oluremi Tinubu, who already kept a joint account with Akande’s wife at First Heritage. Five days after the NOW account was opened, $80,000 was wired into it from a bank in Houston maintained by one of Akande’s relatives. Tinubu would later use the NOW account to buy a $10,000 Certificate of Deposit for an $8,000 car loan, listing Akande as his cousin on the application.

At the time, Tinubu’s take home as a Mobil Oil Nigeria executive was a mere $2,400 a month and he claimed not to have any other revenue streams. Yet he still managed to deposit $661,000 into his individual money market account in 1990 and then another $1,216,500 a year later. He also opened more accounts with Citibank in its worldwide personal banking unit, transferring over half a million dollars from his First Heritage money market account into one of them in early 1991.

Mobil Oil Nigeria told Moss that Tinubu’s role at the company never involved transferring large sums of money between banks and that it didn’t keep deposits in any institutions in the south suburbs of Chicago, where First Heritage was based. Moreover, although Tinubu moved back to Nigeria in 1983, he neglected to file U.S. income tax returns after 1984 despite having sizable, interest-generating deposits in American banks. All of this was enough to persuade a magistrate judge of the Northern District to issue seizure warrants for Tinubu’s First Heritage and Citibank accounts. Collectively, more than $1.4 million belonging to the Nigerian was confiscated.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/27/nigeria-s-next-leader-s-ties-to-a-heroin-ring.html