These are not the best times for the president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT). In an exclusive report by Bloomberg, it has been revealed that BAT’s son, 37-year-old Oluwaseyi Tinubu, has gotten himself in the mud by acquiring property linked with fraud.
[Seyi Tinubu (L) with dad, Bola Tinubu (R) / Twitter]
What’s the gist?
According to corporate documents seen by Bloomberg, Oluwaseyi, a principal shareholder for Aranda Overseas Corp. —an offshore company— paid $10.8m to Deutsche Bank for a property in St. John’s Woods, north London, in late 2017. Buying property overseas is not in itself the issue. The trouble here is that the Nigerian government wanted to confiscate this particular one Seyi bought. Its former owner, Kolawole Aluko —an associate of former petroleum minister Dieziani Madueke— was suspected of having acquired it with proceeds from crime.
In June 2016, a federal judge in Abuja granted a request by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to seize more than a dozen properties that Aluko owned in Nigeria and overseas, including the one in St. John’s Wood. That forfeiture order was still in effect when Seyi bought the house 16 months later.
To provide a basic analogy, it’s like going to Computer Village in Ikeja to buy a phone. You have the option of buying from any of the registered phone dealers. Instead, you buy from a suspected thief the police are after, maybe because you think you’d get it cheap. But what complicates matters is you’re not just anybody — you’re the president-elect’s son.
Essentially, while Buhari’s government was, in the public eye, going after allegedly corrupt persons in the previous administration, behind the scenes, their properties were being reacquired in offshore deals.
Neither BAT’s, nor Seyi’s spokespersons responded to Bloomberg for comments. Aluko’s lawyer also declined, saying the matter was “sub judice”, i.e. a matter still in court and could not be discussed. Deutsche Bank also refused to comment. However, Bloomberg did note that this apartment was what BAT used to receive Buhari in August 2021 when the president came to visit.
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What next?
Whether the president-elect or his son will respond to these allegations in the coming days remains to be seen. But we cannot overlook that BAT’s list of scandals is piling up by the day. Carrying that kind of baggage not only bodes poorly for him but for the reputation of Nigeria — if he gets sworn in. With 27 days left till May 29, we wonder what other controversies BAT has for us.
