Former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, has alleged that President Bola Tinubu personally financed the 2015 vice-presidential campaign of former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and paid more than N2 billion to engage political consultants linked to former United States President Barack Obama.
Lawal made the claims in an interview with Symfoni TV released on Saturday while discussing Tinubu’s role in the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential campaign that produced the late President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015.
According to the former SGF, Tinubu provided significant financial support for the APC campaign and separately funded Osinbajo’s activities because the vice-presidential campaign operated partly outside the structure of the main Buhari campaign.
“Through him (Tinubu), we were able to raise sufficient funds to do the campaign.
“Not only did he do that, Osinbajo’s portion of the campaign, he funded it, hired a chair to fund the trip because our Osinbajo campaign was a little bit broken away from the main campaign,” Lawal said.
He explained that Osinbajo’s campaign had a distinct focus because of concerns among some Christian groups and ethnic communities about Buhari’s candidacy at the time.
“Osinbajo on his own was a pastor, his ethnic nationalities and Christians had some doubts about Buhari. He was on that side.
“He wasn’t on our own area, and he was just doing sort of semi-independent of the main campaign. Tinubu was funding it,” he added.
Lawal also alleged that Tinubu hired political consultants from the United States to improve the APC’s campaign strategy, describing them as associates of Obama.
“Then I know of another place when he hired some consultants for us from the US, who were doing quite a lot of professional work.
“I don’t know their names. I just know that they were Obama people, and they came and they transformed our campaign, and I knew that the money he paid them was in excess of two billion naira equivalent of dollars,” he said.
The former SGF further claimed that Tinubu personally covered major campaign expenses instead of relying on funds from the party’s central campaign account.
“And there’s another thing about Bola Tinubu: if there’s a need for an expenditure, no matter how massive, he doesn’t come to the campaign purse; he spends from his own purse.
“All these things I told you, some people don’t know this, but I was there, and I knew this. And he did all these things,” Lawal said.
