Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, foremost presidential candidate in the country and revered national leader of ruling All Progressives Congress(APC), has dismissed as mischievous, rumour that he plans to relocate Nigeria’s capital to Lagos State if elected president of the country in 2023.
Former Military despot, President Ibrahim Babangida on December 12, 1991, relocated Nigeria’s capital from Lagos to Abuja.
Surprisingly, there have been unsubstantiated reports being peddled of plans by Tinubu to relocate the federal capital to Lagos should he win next year’s presidential election.
Dismissing the rumours in a statement signed by versatile Bayo Onanuga, the APC Presidential Campaign Council, speaking for Tinubu, distanced the party’s candidate, from such talks calculated to cause disaffection in the polity.
The statement signed by Bayo Onanuga read thus:
“The All Progressives Congress Presidential Campaign Council hereby alerts Nigerians about the latest insidious campaign in some parts of the country against our candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. After exhausting their arsenal of calumnies and character assassination against Tinubu, the opposition PDP and their surrogate Labour Party have begun a multi-pronged desperate campaign of falsehoods.”
“In one of the falsehoods being circulated, especially in the North West of the country, Tinubu is said to harbour plans to relocate the Federal Capital from Abuja to Lagos on succeeding President Muhammad Buhari from 29th May, 2023. This misinformation campaign, according to field reports, is being given some traction by some elders on the payroll of the Peoples Democratic Party.
“We are shocked that some people could contrive such egregious lie, all in the name of politics, with the intention to confuse our burgeoning support base in that part of the country. Let us say with emphasis, that Asiwaju does not contemplate any such plan and will not do anything that is so ultra-unconstitutional.
Besides his dismissal of the rumour of the alleged plan to relocate Nigeria’s capital to Lagos, the Tinubu Campaign added:
“The same purveyors of falsehood have also been distorting the commercialization of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited by the APC government of President Muhammadu Buhari. The truth is that President Buhari has not privatised NNPC as planned by the PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar. Buhari has instead made it a commercial entity, owned by all the tiers of government, in line with the Petroleum Industry Act.
“In due course, the company will be in a position to declare and share dividends to all its owners, the way Aramco of Saudi Arabia and Petrobas of Brazil do. As the destined successor of President Buhari, Asiwaju Tinubu will continue the policy of the Buhari administration. Unlike Atiku, Tinubu has no plan to sell NNPC to his friends or cronies.”
