The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council has demanded that the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, be arrested and prosecuted immediately.
At a press conference on Sunday, the PDP Presidential Campaign Council (PCC) urged the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), the police, the Department of State Service (DSS), and the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) to arrest the former Lagos State governor for alleged graft and drug-related issues.
Dele Momodu, director of strategic communication; Paul Ibe, media adviser to PDP presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar; Daniel Bwala, campaign spokesperson; Phrank Shaibu, special assistant to Atiku on public communication; and Charles Aniagwu, campaign spokesperson all signed the statement to journalists, according to Naija News.
Shaibu, who read the statement during the press conference, said that any attempt to intimidate the opposition is an attempt to disrupt the conduct of a peaceful election.
According to the PDP-PCC, there are multiple claims against the APC candidate, and it is critical that law enforcement agencies arrest and prosecute Tinubu.
It was recalled that on October 25, 2019, two activists, the late Ariyo Dare-Atoye and Deji Adeyanju, petitioned the EFCC “asking for Tinubu to be investigated and prosecuted for violating the Money Laundering Act after publicly admitting to sharing millions of naira on the eve of elections.”
“Nigeria is now dealing with a number of challenges,” the PDP-PCC stated. Bandits and terrorists are devastating numerous communities in the north, militants in the Niger Delta are targeting oil infrastructure and driving the country’s economy to its knees, and secessionists are holding the South East hostage. Adding state-sponsored drug trafficking to the mix will be a tragedy. According to court records, Adegboyega Muiz Akande, a Nigerian drug lord, managed a sophisticated network of heroin traffickers in Chicago, Illinois, in the 1980s.
“This inquiry has revealed the identities of other persons, including families, who have worked with Akande in various capacities in the distribution organization. According to Kevin Moss, a special agent with the Inland Revenue Service, one of these persons has been identified by the investigation as Bola Tinubu. According to court papers, Akande accompanied Tinubu to First Heritage Bank in 1989 and created an account for himself and his wife, Senator Oluremi Tinubu. Tinubu indicated in records that he worked for Mobil Nigeria Limited and earned $2,400 per month, with no other sources of income.
“However, documents from his First Heritage Bank account reveal that Tinubu placed $661,000 into his individual money market account in 1990 and $1,216,500 into the same money market account in 1991. Mobil executives told US investigators that, despite his position as treasurer, Tinubu had no direct access to the company’s cash and hence could not deposit monies on its behalf. Tinubu, the political Maradona, quickly reached an agreement with US authorities and forfeited $460,000 to escape prison before fleeing to Nigeria. However, this does not affect the reality that he was a bagman for narcotics dealers. Nigerian law is unambiguous. Criminal cases have no statute of limitations and can be reopened at any moment, particularly in the interest of national security. We demand that the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrest and punish Bola Ahmed Tinubu immediately for drug trafficking.
“Aside from the criminal nature of this call, there is also a national security component. The world will remember what happened in Panama when a renowned drug lord, Manuel Noriega, became president in 1983. During his six-year reign, Panama became a narcos state as Noriega allied himself with Pablo Escobar’s Medellin cartel. In the sad case of a Bola Tinubu administration, Nigerians will be thrown into a drug catastrophe on par with the Colombia issue. Violence will rise as a result of easy access to narcotics. Nigerians cannot take this risk.
“To be fair to the EFCC, its current Chairman, Abdulrasheed Bawa, submitted a letter to the Code of Conduct Bureau while he was the Head of the EFCC’s Lagos office” (CCB). Bawa sought Tinubu’s asset disclosure forms in a letter titled CR/3000/EFCC/LS/Vol4/322 dated November 6, 2020. However, according to The Guardian, the CCB stated that the paperwork were misplaced. Since Tinubu’s election as the APC’s presidential candidate, the EFCC has been silent on the matter, and Ariyo, the petition’s author, has died. We hereby request that the EFCC offer an update on this case.
“Tinubu does not have immunity. We now request that he be arrested and prosecuted by the EFCC, the NDLEA, the Nigeria Police Force, the Office of the Honourable Attorney-General of the Federation, and the Department of State Services.”
