A pressure group in the southwestern part of Nigeria called Southwest Renaissance Group has said that Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s scheduled foreign trip is an effort to whitewash his past drug and criminal records.
The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is billed to begin a trip to the United States of America and Europe on December 4. According to the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Tinubu will use the opportunity of the trip to market his manifesto to American and European leaders.
However, the Southwest Renaissance Group says the reason given by APC for the trip is a smokescreen.
It said in a statement signed by its convener, Hon. Abdulsalam Olaitan, that the trip is to afford Tinubu the opportunity he badly needs to manage his alleged drug and criminal records as well as seek further medical assistance.
According to the group, the Tinubu camp was making frenetic efforts to upstage allegations of his involvement in a drug cartel while a resident of Chicago.
The group, which said the drug allegation had messed with Tinubu’s Campaign, further said the former Lagos state governor, is also in need of urgent medical attention.
The statement titled:
“Nigerians Beware: How Tinubu plans to use trip to the US, Europe to whitewash past criminal record, forgery, health status”, reads in detail: “The presidential candidate of the APC, Bola Tinubu has concluded plans with lobbyists in the United States to visit the U.S. and some European countries.
“The purpose of those visits, our findings reveal, is to whitewash the record of inconsistencies in Tinubu’s academic claims and for photo ops to confuse the public on his history with drugs trafficking and indictment thereof, by the United States justice system.
“Barring any last-minute change, Tinubu has perfected plans to be in Chatham House, London on the 5th of December 2022 to talk about security and the economy which his party has failed woefully in every respect. Tinubu is the national leader of the incumbent All Progressives Congress and we wish to assert that other than deceiving Nigerians and the world at large, the APC presidential candidate and his party have nothing new to offer, different from what the current reign of suffering that the ruling party has ceaselessly unleashed on the country in the past seven-plus years.
Will Tinubu be campaigning against his party? Or, will he be telling his audience at the Chatham House, that his political party that has railroaded 133 million Nigerians into multi-dimensional poverty should be allowed to continue kneeling on the neck of the Nigerian people?
“Tinubu intends to further travel to Washington DC, for paid-for access to the State Department. The APC presidential flag-bearer is using the services of a lobbyist to blackmail the US government into taking sides when they invited Atiku Abubakar; hence they asked him to also come. He allegedly plans to organize paid meetings with politicians in DC to create a false impression of his popularity.
“The main objective of his desperation to visit the States Department is to confuse the public about his record of criminal forfeiture in narcotics trading.
“However, we wish to disagree with the back-door approach that Tinubu is resorting to in clarifying his record of indictment by a United States court in 1993. We insist that nothing short of full disclosure on the matter will be acceptable to the Nigerian people. Nigerians will not vote for a president who, just 30 years ago, was linked to a drug cartel, busted, investigated, indicted, and forfeited $460,000 in the United States.
“Again, we are reliably informed that Tinubu intends to travel to Chicago to meet with unknown persons in order to diffuse his records of indictment for drugs trafficking and money laundering.
“We, therefore, challenge him to use the opportunity of his visit to apply for and secure the release of all the Certified True Copies of all the documents in his indictment case, including the case history. We insist that nothing short of such full disclosure will assuage the misgivings that Nigerians have against the prospects of an indicted drugs lord being the president of Nigeria.
Nigeria is not a Banana Republic!
“Tinubu also plans to visit Chicago University and take pictures to suggest his schooling and certificates are regular. He is challenged to make public, also, Certified True Copies of his academic records, including his certificates as contained in his INEC forms of 1999 and 2003 which he deposed to under oath. While it is no longer in doubt that Tinubu attended the Chicago State University though there are allegations that he may have done so with the results of a female, it is incontrovertible that he never attended the Chicago University contrary to the form he filled in 1999.
“Tinubu plans to visit Paris, France for undisclosed meetings with communities, among others
“We challenge Tinubu to make his engagements, especially seminars public to prove the soundness of his mind in analytical sense that will convince all Nigerians that he is of sound cognitive health.”
