A Bloomberg report has linked Seyi Tinubu, son of Nigeria’s president-elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to the purchase of a UK property the Muhammadu Buhari-led government aimlessly wanted to confiscate.
The property — a three-floor residence in St. John’s Wood — was traced to Kolawole Aluko, one of the allies allegedly involved in a shady oil deal with the former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dieziani Alison-Madueke. The property would later be seized from Aluko.
Seyi who manages Aranda Overseas Corporation, a UK-based firm, however, paid $10.8 million for the said property. Seyi, 37, is the primary shareholder of Aranda Overseas Corporation, according to the report.
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He completed the purchase of the mansion through the help of an offshore shell company in 2017 in a transaction organised by Deutsche Bank, the report revealed. The St. John’s Wood building is equipped with an eight-car driveway, two gardens, electric gates and a gym.
It sits on a 7,000-square-foot land and was under investigation after seizure by Nigeria due to its link to fraud proceeds acquired by Aluko who allegedly stole from the Nigerian treasury through deceitful deals.
Aluko, 53, and Alison-Madueke, 62, have been on the run since 2015 when they were accused of multiple frauds by the federal government. The medium also revealed that some of their ill-gotten loot had been previously located by authorities in the United States and Europe.
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Tinubu, 71, won an election in February as the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress and is scheduled to succeed his political ally Buhari on May 29. He was a key powerbroker in the merger of opposition parties that brought the current head of state to office in 2015. However, Bloomberg says it could not immediately find indications that Tinubu was personally involved in the saga.
Four years after the hitherto confiscated house was purchased by Seyi, Buhari paid a visit to Tinubu at the same building. Buhari’s spokesman and Alison-Madueke’s lawyer declined to comment to the medium as Spokespeople for Attorney General Abubakar Malami, the Nigerian National Petroleum Co. Ltd. and the EFCC did not respond to requests for comment.
ANTI-GRAFT WAR
In 2016, Buhari vowed to phase out corruption in the country. He will leave office in weeks to come without fulfilling the promise. The anti-corruption war is tripoded on the implementation of Treasury Single Account, Biometric Verification Number (BVN) and ‘Whistle Blowing’ policy, but “politicisation of the anti-corruption fight” and refusal to investigate accusations have cast doubt on the fight, frustrate the war, The Conversation observed.
Adams Oshiomole, the then chairman of Buhari’s party [APC] had asked defectors from opposition parties to join the governing party and have their ‘sins’ forgiven. Subsequently, the country plunges into irredeemable corruption profiling. By the end of 2019 when President Buhari got a second term, Nigeria had dropped to 146 and by 2020 ranked 149 by Transparency International.
Those in Buhari’s government seemed to be pardoned for their sins.
