The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential campaign council says anyone “linked to a drug cartel” should not be voted as president.
In a statement on Thursday, Kola Ologbondiyan, spokesperson of the campaign council, said the alleged involvement of Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in a “crime bordering on drugs” in which some monies were forfeited raises a moral question about his presidential bid.
On Tuesday, the cyberspace was flooded with what appeared to be certified true copies of a settlement order issued by a US court domiciled in the northern district of Illinois regarding forfeiture of funds in some bank accounts linked to the name “Bola Tinubu”.
Ologbondiyan asked the APC presidential candidate to take responsibility for the consequences of the allegations against him.
“Our campaign maintains that Nigeria as a nation cannot afford to allow an individual with the remotest link to a drug cartel near the presidential villa,” Ologbondiyan said.
“We insist that the mention of Asiwaju Tinubu’s name in a crime bordering on drugs and consequent upon which some monies were forfeited, raises a moral question and issues of serious security threat.
“How, for instance, will our nation cope with a president who will be consistently harassed, intimidated and blackmailed by a drug cartel?
“It is also disturbing that Asiwaju Tinubu’s handlers are running around an ocean of excuses from where they have been fetching what they believe will convince Nigerians.
“We ask: what business was Asiwaju Tinubu running that such a whopping sum of $460,000 would be deducted as tax from his account?
“It is easily deductible that the $460,000 removed from the account represented the illicit fund that accrued from the drug. That accounts for the reason why no other sum was removed from the account contrary to the argument from Tinubu’s minders that the amount represented a tax.
“If indeed, like Asiwaju Tinubu’s handlers have said, Tinubu “took responsibility” for drugs money, it goes with saying that he must also take responsibility for the consequences of that action.”
Festus Keyamo, spokesman of the APC presidential campaign council, had said the funds linked to Tinubu in the US were tax deductions — not drug proceeds.
“After all the rigamarole trying to find out whether the accounts where the money came from are linked to drugs, they came to the conclusion that the deposits he made — what these bankers called investments — they said he had not paid tax on these interests. That is all,” Keyamo said in an interview in Channels Television.