Just like his real name, his state of origin, his date of birth, his age, his educational background and qualifications, everything about President Bola Tinubu is shrouded in mystery and all about smoke and mirrors. As the Nigerian saying goes, “the more you look, the less you see”. His mysterious ways continued this week with the release of details from the supplementary budget that he submitted to the National Assembly which included a line for a presidential yacht to the tune of 5bn naira.
The outcry from many Nigerians, facing crippling poverty, rising inflation and an economy heading south, led to a hasty retreat from Tinubu’s spokesman Temitope Ajayi: “From what I know, the request for a yacht, however it is named or couched in the budget is from the navy and they must have operational reasons for why it is required.”
Abubakar Bichi of House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation then alleged that the 5bn naira has been switched from naval yacht spending to increase the budget for student loans. This has the strange whiff of what Fela Kuti would have called “government magic”.
Some of Tinubu’s social media activists were also keen to point out that the trick of having a presidential yacht in the budget didn’t start with the current president.
In 2010 when the Navy wanted to buy a Yacht for President Jonathan it was 3.3bn, I'm just surprised it's only 5bn 13 years later despite Naira devaluation. The Navy always put things like this in budget doesn't mean it'll be funded but it's important for people to speak out!
— Ayobami (@dondekojo) November 1, 2023
Anyone with a passing knowledge of how billions of dollars were allocated to the military to fight insurgencies especially Boko Haram in the northeast, would know that the money allocated hardly ever reached the frontline in terms purchasing what it was budgeted for. In all likelihood billions were budgeted for the purchase of a presidential yacht by the navy and the money sailed away possibly into offshore accounts. This would have continued with the current supplementary budget without the uproar especially on social media. However, no one should also be deceived that the money won’t still disappear, despite official reassurances of spending being diverted to student loans.
Even the proposed student loan scheme is guaranteed to be another avenue for looting public funds as we pointed out in June.
Nigeria’s universities need free tuition not interest-free loans
Some Nigerians on social media have suggested that Tinubu, due to his links to the heroin trade in Chicago in the 1990s, needed the yacht to continue drug trafficking.
Google yacht and illicit drugs.
Yacht: the plaything of the nouveau riche for yachting drugs… https://t.co/vhZaKRszua
— Great Oracle Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary (@AbdulMahmud01) November 1, 2023
This may or may not be the motive behind the presidential yacht, but Tinubu has history in using a yacht to make public funds disappear. In 2008, his cronies in Lagos State bought for 8bn naira the Sunborn Yacht Hotel that was moored at Docklands in East London. A few years later the floating hotel was back in London. This was how we reported it at the time:
The floating hotel was part of the Docklands scenery from 2005 until some people thought it was a good idea for it to be moored by the Lagos Marina. The deal that took it to Lagos was shrouded in mystery. Then Lagos State commissioner for tourism Tokunbo Akifuyomi claimed it was acquired under a “public private partnership” between the state government and Diamond Capital Investment Ltd and that it was going to boost tourism in the state.
No one was quite sure who contributed what to the estimated 8bn naira (about $40m) price tag. What became clear was that yacht fell very quickly into a serious state of disrepair and rust, and was not put to use, with no tourist dollars coming in.
The yacht disappeared from Lagos in 2013 and some have claimed that the public money used to acquire it also disappeared with it. The opposition in the state screamed corruption and asked then governor Babatunde Fashola to account for the state’s involvement in such a floating white elephant.
Tunji Shelle, the state chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) asked in early 2014: “After floating miserably on the Marina water for so long, the controversial Sunburn Yacht, which cost the Lagos State Government, under (former Governor) Bola Tinubu, a whooping N8bn suddenly disappeared, only to be sighted at Thames in England.
“Now, the question is: who orchestrated this 419 and who were the beneficiaries of this waste of public fund. This is certainly a fraud and (Governor Babatunde) Fashola must tell us something he knows about this fraud, failure which he remains an accessory after the fact in the fraud.”
The claims that no public money was involved in the deal were betrayed by the response at the time from Joe Igbokwe the publicity secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Lagos State: “Every successful investor or businessman will tell you that business is not a bed of roses. He knows business is not all about gains all the time; you gain in some and lose in some. It is the same with governments all over the world. No government anywhere in the world will tell you that it has achieved 100 per cent success in every decision it has taken.
“The world will forgive you for taking decisions and making all the mistakes but the world will not forgive you if you do not take decisions at all for fear of failure. LASG [Lagos State Government] has done away with the bad business called the Sunborn Yacht project. Case rested.”
After being refurbished and modernised in Finland, the bad business for the people of Lagos, but “good business” for “the beneficiaries of this waste of public fund” aka the Sunborn Yacht Hotel returned to London’s Docklands last year.
It was a remarkable case of “back to sender”. Shame we can’t say the same about the Lagos State money that funded its purchase.
Once again, Tinubu is being associated with boats and missing public funds.
