Ahead of the 2023 Presidential elections, the latest salvo was fired hours ago with the True Certified Copy of alleged drug and money laundering case against the Presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu surfaced online.
Tinubu came under intense public ridicule and political onslaught for his role in an early 1990s alleged drug trafficking money laundering case in Chicago, United States of America (USA) allegations rooted out by the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as alleged by the Official Spokesperson of the APC Presidential Campaign Council, Festus Keyamo on Wednesday.
Tinubu’s allies have also made efforts to downplay the matter entirely as a trivial distraction to Nigeria’s democratic experience because it happened decades ago.
But Nigerians have insisted that the Presidential candidate should come clean on his involvement in the case, which saw him forfeit up to $460,000 to the U.S. authorities in 1993.
The 56-page document released by the District Court’s Headquarters in Chicago did not include crucial new details, but it further confirmed snippets of the matter that had been shared spontaneously by the media for years.
The latest certified copies of the court case, obtained on August 10, 2022 showed Tinubu and two others named K.O. Tinubu and Alhaji Mogati were involved in banking proceeds of illicit drugs and money laundering with Heritage Bank and Citibank.
It was not immediately clear whether or not ‘Alhaji Mogati’ was a misspelling of Alhaja Abibatu Mogaji, Mr Tinubu’s foster mother, who passed on in 2013.
The U.S. government had in July 1993 sought forfeiture of proceeds of narcotics Tinubu was accused of money laundering.
The matter was resolved in a compromise between the Tinubus and the U.S. authorities, with the Tinubus being asked to keep the money in the Heritage Bank account while the $460,000 in the Citibank account was forfeited.
A federal judge subsequently dismissed the matter with prejudice on September 21, 1993, which effectively foreclosed the matter from being litigated again by all parties.
It, however, remained unclear whether or not Nigerian authorities could still bring charges against Tinubu over the same case in Nigerian courts.
Meanwhile, Festus Keyamo (SAN) in reaction to the news going viral on social media said it was the hatchet job the PDP went to the United States for when they said they went for consultations.
“PDP Went To The US To Dust Old Document’
Keyamo insisted that there was no criminal indictment or conviction against Tinubu, alleging that the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was behind the reincarnation of the controversial court document.
“His (Tinubu’s) detractors kept bringing up these issues over and over when his political profile is rising, when he wants to run for office or any political turn in his life, they will bring up these issues,” Keyamo said.
“The date on the papers flying up and down, the date of certification is 2022, so they are using this to confuse people that these are fresh papers. If documents are 40 years old or 100 years old, once you go to court, and apply for certified true copies of those documents, they will give you those documents but they will stamp the day they are giving you those documents.
“This is what our detractors, the PDP, perhaps that is what they went to the US for when they pretended that they went for high-level engagement. This is part of the high-level engagement they went for.”
Tinubu, 70, is in the 2023 contest for Aso Rock’s top job alongside top contenders like PDP’s Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi of the Labour Party in the contest many analysts have described as a three-horse race.
