Tinubu Was Rich Before Joining Politics – Alake

The Director of Strategic Communication of the All Progressives Congress (APC)presidential campaign council, Dele Alake, has said Bola Tinubu, the party’s presidential standard bearer, was already a rich man before he ventured into politics in 1991.

He said Tinubu was not a pauper before 1991 but made his money through investment in stocks in foreign currencies.

Speaking on Sunday night on Channels Television, Alake said questioning Tinubu’s source of wealth is sheer jealousy.

“It is an extraneous issue and, like I always say, pandering to the whims and caprices of those who are jealous and extremely envious and suffering from OCH, obsessive-compulsive hatred, of Asiwaju,” said while defending the stance against knowing Tinubu’s source of wealth.

Critics of the former Lagos governor have continued to question his source of wealth and insinuated that he became rich while in government.

The question has become a particularly sticky one as he is a presidential candidate, with the public probing each candidate’s transparency, accountability, and integrity.

But when asked how Tinubu became so wealthy without visible sources of his wealth, Alake explained thus; “I knew him to have been spending money even before he got to the office. In 1991, he was going into politics, he contested a senatorial election – Lagos west – and he won.

“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 added.

According to him, Tinubu “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 the SDP at that time. He was also funding. He was not a pauper,” Alake said.

When pressed further to explain to the public Tinubu’s actual source of wealth, he explained, “What I know is that right from his days in the corporate world, he has been trading in stocks even in foreign currencies.

“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,” Alake said.