IBADAN, Nigeria (VOICE OF NAIJA) – The spokesperson for Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Council, Mr Festus Keyamo, has said the drug trafficking allegation leveled against All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, is not new.
Keyamo said Tinubu was not indicted for drug trafficking and money laundering in the United States (US) as being asserted in some quarters.
He stated this last night as a guest on the Wednesday’s edition of Channels Television’s programme ‘Politics Today’.
According to him, a document that resurfaced in the media a few days ago, alleging that the US District Court, Northern District of Illinois, indicted Tinubu for drug trafficking and money laundering was not true.
Keyamo said nothing in the trending document indicted Tinubu and vowed to stake his reputation and years of legal practice to defend it.
He said Tinubu was vilified unfairly, adding that the presidential candidate did not make any plea bargain with the US authorities on the matter.
“The allegations against Tinubu are merely a storm in a teacup; they are not new and have been sufficiently dealt with. The papers are washed out and not freshly issued.
“The issue is not a new one. You saw some blogs and news sites, online sites making weird headlines as ‘breaking news, just-in, fresh facts. Those are not fresh facts; they are not issues. These issues have been in the public domain for more than 20 years and have been sufficiently addressed.
“None of these allegations deserve any explanation again because they have been explained over and over,” he explained.
According to Keyamo, critics from Labour Party went off the rail by saying the APC presidential candidate was indicted.
“There can not be an indictment if Asiwaju is not a defender or was not a defendant to that case. I repeat it for the Umpteenth time, I don’t want to sound like a broken record here. Asiwaju was not a party to that case.
“It was just an account that was sued not him. It was account in his name that was sued so how could you indict him if there was no account?” he added.
When asked how many accounts were involved, Keyamo simply said ten accounts in three banks.
He stated further: “Not in one person’s name. There were ones linked to his mother. He took responsibility for all of them because they were all Tinubu family. His mother was there, his company was there, his brother was there.
“At the end of the day, they now pleaded with him that please don’t come against us if it was found that we wrongly seized your accounts in the first place.”
Keyamo asked the public to look that paragraph 6: page 2 of the settlement signed by the lawyers.